The Curse of the Red Vine Lovers
by Unfortunately Freckled
Summary: We’re cursed to be with each other for an eternity, Naruto. You’re going to have to get used to the kissing thing. SasuNaru
1. The rhythm

**Curse of the Red Vine Lovers.**

**Chapter one: The rhythm.**

I HAVE REVISSSSSSSSEDDDDDDDD!

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

**The lazy-ish author's mammoth note:** Well, I've done it. After working thousands of hours in the library putting up smutty smut novels in the paperback section, I have finally concluded on writing a story with a plot combined with giant, blatant references to sasunaru goodness. Well, it's more like Sasunaru with a plot strung out between. Bwhahhahaha, I detest my other story with an unholy passion so here is this to make for it—Please enjoy and be nice! Oh, and please review! Pleasseee—I love reviews more than cream soda which is truly stating something. I swear that if I don't make regular updates, it's not because I forget—well sometimes I do but—it's more like I just have a billion things to do and then I asphyxiate. I heart you with my heart and soul! (Is that 

enough incentive to review?) Eee! Forgive the grammar, for it doth suck and shoot me at night.

BWHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHAAAAAA!

I have revised like crazy. I realized some of my dialogue wasn't as fuckinggrand as I once wished it to be. So I fixed some things. It's probably a bit different, but still same general idea. 

Kousoku is the name of the town by the by….Konoha will come up later, yaaaaaah? 

**If there was a soundtrack for this chapter it'd be Dark Waltz by Haley Westenra . **It opens up everything so well! Ahhhhhh, creepiness. I really suggest listening to it. 

Bwwwhaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

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Excerpt from _**Rumfield's Extensive Guide to Most Every Curse. **__Chapter one, page 12: _

"…_the only recognizable difference between a curse and any other spell, exempting of course the unique phonetics of the exact words employed and the relative mass of the ethereal matter emitted, is the loss of freedom. Most spells that are placed upon the recipient are, for the most part, optional. A fitting example would have to be Gulliver's spell which enhances the muscle mass in the body by 50, but only if the receiver allows the change to occur. For curses, there is no option. Whatever the donor's desire, the recipient must follow its charge. Theoretically speaking, where a spell grants another option to a distressed user, a curse obliterates choice. Really, a curse is like a cage of sorts." _

* * *

**Thump**

**Thump**

**Thump**

A mechanical rhythm pounded—like a lullaby strummed by a rusty, rigid robot with joints that glided like dislocated stairs. Everything moved on the beat, with the beat, _in the beat._ There was no misplaced sound to echo insultingly into the still silence—there was no mistake. The world was perfect and aligned. 

**Thump**

**Thump**

**Thump **

Nothing but a line existed; a smooth, straight line that slid down a direct path—no deterring—no off course wanderings. Things were far simpler---a rhythm a proper society would desire between their thighs. 

"Uzumaki! Would you _kindly _stop drumming your pencil? It's disrupting the entire class." 

Naruto Uzumaki, however, was a throbbing wallop on that smooth stiff path; something completely strange, but so well disguised in a veil of regularity that no one could truly pin point just what was so odd about him. 

He'd always known he was just a bit different ever since he'd first stepped through the colorful threshold of kindergarten. All laughter and childish happy chat had ceased as every eye turned and abruptly landed on him. It took several moments for the numb silence to be overturned and that was just the start of a long line of similar first days. 

It wasn't as if he was frightening; he'd always been a bit small for his age and couldn't beat up anybody to save his life (no matter how many times he had tried). And it wasn't as if he was of a weird disposition; he'd always worn completely normal clothing, all though a little tattered around the edges, and he'd always had an average IQ with only a couple of failing grades. So he was absolutely stumped as to why it seemed there was an imaginary barrier erected between him and other people. He only had one friend, Shikamaru, but even he did not cross the line. He knew everything about Naruto, but Naruto knew virtually nothing about him. 

Actually, if there was one thing he knew about his only companion it was that he was lazy and typically slept in class. This aggravated Naruto because when he began to day dream, as he often did, there was no one left cognizant to copy down the notes. He didn't have much of an aptitude for academics, especially in science. Failing the baneful subject had become somewhat of a ritual for him every year and that was why this semester he was determined to pass. Keeping his head out of the clouds was so difficult though, that sometimes he had to just move _something_ to make sure he wasn't totally paralyzed with boredom. But drumming your pencil could only be done for so long before your hand cramped or the teacher snapped. 

"Really, Uzumaki," the teacher's thin white lips smirked, appearing like two slices of paper folded precisely into sharp corners. "I thought this year was going to be the year you finally passed a science class or do you really enjoy the remedial summer school course? You can't very well pass, stare out the window, and play your bothersome little drum solo can you?" 

A soft snickering fluttered through the air hesitantly-- for any sort of merriment such as laughter felt inherently forbidden in Orochimaru-sensei's classroom. The white-wash walls glowed eerily under the gaze of the fluorescent lights buzzing overhead; the windows were barred with plastic, black blinds to keep the distractions of the outside world in their proper place. The only way Naruto was sure that the sky retained its blue was through a crinkled, bent blind.

"I was telling you about your project, yes?" He sounded slightly exasperated. "I want it in by the 23rd. I will not take it late—even with excused absences." 

"What project?" Naruto interjected as he sat up suddenly. His pencil rolled off his desk to the floor. 

Orochimaru-sensei's eyes flashed irritably as they slowly turned to rest on his face. 

"The project," he seethed, "I was discussing with the _rest_ of the class while you were off in your own world, _Uzumaki_"

Naruto loved to be singled out by most every teacher but Orochimaru. He could handle being scolded—it was an unusual occurrence if it didn't happen at least once a day. But Orochimaru's scolding was more pointed and slick. It burrowed to the deepest part of him and made him cold all over. 

"Because your defective mind did not absorb anything of what I said, and Lord knows I don't want to teach you again in summer school, I'll repeat myself for your benefit. You are each going to be assigned a biological process that occurs in everyday life; for instance, cellular respiration, glycolisis, or aging. I want to know everything about their cycles, everything down to the precise enzyme that drives the—"

…And Naruto, like a light flickering for months parched for watts, was out. Staring at his window, he watched a transient black entity flash across the tiny span of his view outside—an orange butterfly slowly flicker through the air—the flash from the reflection of a car speeding by. 

…And then the bell chimed overhead. Naruto cursed his inattentiveness as he gathered his folders together in his book bag and slung it over his shoulder. As the students leisurely exited the classroom, he continued to stare at the window for a few seconds more and the small, blue strip that offered only a taunting glimpse of a place he felt he was allowed to observe but never touch.

Why was it that he couldn't focus on the here and now? 

"Coming?" Shikamaru questioned from beside him. Naruto grinned.

"Yup!" 

* * *

"So are you coming to the library to research your process?" 

Naruto indolently kicked a stray rock and shrugged. The tiny pebbles in the side walk glimmered in the afternoon sun like iridescent flakes of silver. 

There were not many people on their walk home today, which was comprehensible being that it was at least 20 degrees. Naruto didn't have money for the train and he figured Shikamaru didn't either (or he was just bored and had nothing else to do). He had to tough it out with his thick orange coat and scarf tied snugly around his face.

"I dunno—"He replied, shivering unconsciously as a frigid breeze snaked its way through a hole in his gloves. They were still useful, and Naruto had difficulty tossing useful things away. 

"I'm sure I know enough about aging to write a crappy little paper, right? I mean look—I made it all the way to 16 alright. I can write a bit about puberty, and then shift to getting old and having to wear diapers whenever you leave the house." 

"Naruto," his companion pocketed his hands (an action, Naruto noticed, he only partook in when he was either annoyed or bored). "Do you even know any old people?"

He pondered for a moment, his eyebrows caving into his eyes in doing so. "How about—the man who runs the Ramen stand?" 

A sigh emitted from his companion's mouth. "He's middle aged. I mean _old_." 

Naruto growled. "Old is old! He's got gray hairs!"

"Do you know why his hair is gray?"

Naruto halted and glowered at Shikarmaru's ponytail swinging rhythmically in a sluggish tempo ahead. 

"That's what old people do. They just get skinny and gray." 

Stopping, Shikamaru turned to face the blonde boy, tilting a sardonic eyebrow towards his hairline. "Yes, but why do they get gray and skinny now that they're old?"

Naruto stole another moment to think, probing every crook and cranny for any reasonable answer. None floated to the top to save him. He resorted to his pool of nonsense, which was always overflowing with bullshit. 

"Because their hair got bored with being the same color all those years and it's too much of a hassle for them to walk to the kitchen to eat something. They might break a hip." 

Shikarmaru rolled his eyes and continued strolling forward. "There is always a process in doing things—"he called back to the defiant stationary figure, "nothing just magically appears without energy being spent." 

A sudden anger licked Naruto's stomach and traced fiery lines up and down his throat. He had no idea where this unexpected fury had budded from, but it claimed him with such a sudden passion he hardly could account for the words that flew unguarded out his mouth. 

"Why does everything have to have a damn reason? Why can't some things just be because they are!" 

Shikamaru's footsteps abruptly discontinued. A tense silence strung out between the two with only a car speeding by to signal the word was still acting properly. His lazy escort stuck his head over his shoulder and eyed him with such intensity that Naruto had to stare down at his sneakers.

"This," he announced firmly, "is why you are failing science." 

The chill that swept off Shikamaru's words wrapped around his arms and burned him. His thumb slowly crept up to his mouth and he began to chew the small, ragged nail there; a nervous habit he had carried into adolescence from childhood. 

"Why does everything have to be so damn vague?" He said softly, his thumb muffling his words into disjointed slurs. He spared a hesitant glance at Shikamaru, whose heavy stare had softened. 

"Why can't something be—absolute?"

The question fluttered in the air for only half a second before Shikamaru's stern lips melded into a slight smile. In one quick, fluid movement, he seized Naruto's wrist and proceeded to drag him onwards He bobbled uncertainly behind him.

"Where are we going?" Naruto interrogated, feeling as though he already knew the answer.

"The library. Without my help, your project will lack common rationality."

Naruto scowled. "Who needs that in the first place?"

"Everyone."

Naruto loved books, but hated to read. There was just something so comforting about the thick, coarse scent that soared off the pages when they flipped, but plowing through all the words and sentences engraved on them seemed next to impossible to do. He remembered his mother had liked books—Or at least he liked to believe so (maybe he had lied to himself?)

Sometimes, he could imagine himself as a small toddler, crawling carefully in between stacks and stacks of vivid books, piled like haphazard skyscrapers puncturing the air. He could almost witness his mother sitting cross-legged on the couch, reading a book with her plastic-framed glasses perched on her nose and a look of intense focus icing her eyes over. Then, she would notice his stare and look up, vibrant red tendrils of hair swinging wildly as she did so, and smile pleasantly down at him—not a beautiful smile, but a kind, ordinary grin. He had no idea if this memory was fictitious or not; he wasn't even sure what his mother looked like. He had only ever seen one true picture of his family. It was a black and white wedding photo and his mother had not been smiling at all. 

Holding a book in his hands sort of made him feel connected to this woman he imagined his mother to be, as if a small strand of who she really was still lay cradled beneath the cover. He had all but given up on ever reading a book with more then 300 pages all the way through, his attention span just did not warrant such, but he still felt calm and protected when he walked into the library; the seemingly endless rows of books his silent guardians. 

--but it was only pleasurable when he wandered in to listen to his MP3 player in a quiet place. Otherwise, the library became what it was always intended to be by its founders. 

The library was the physical embodiment of everything in this world Naruto despised: learning and silence. Shikamaru literally had to drag him through the double doors by the scruff of his collar to get him inside, earning some disapproving glances from a couple of hassled-looking librarians in the process. 

"Noooo! Pleassseee! " 

His wail was matched by a dozen cries of 'Quiet please!'.

(Sometimes he forgot that not everyone talked as loud and stridently as he did.)

"I don't want to be here." He whined quietly.

"Tough. You'll thank me later." Shikamaru remained completely composed as he led a reluctant Naruto by the arm towards the virtually deserted back of the library.

"Common—let's go to the computer cafe or get some Ramen or um we could just sleep, ne? You like sleeping!—" 

"Naruto," he interjected irately, "when else would you do this?" 

"Tomorrow!" 

"That's what you said about last week's English paper." 

"Yeah, and I did it." He huffed. 

"No you didn't." Shikamaru calmly stated, finally releasing him as they entered the barren fields of non-fiction. Rubbing the red place left by the firm grip, Naruto glowered viciously, but his partner was to busy scouting out a vacant table to notice or care. 

"All you did was write some lame excuse about a radioactive sumo wrestler breathing fire on your paper and eating all your pencils." 

"I know." He sniggered, though inwardly, he cringed. His well of bullshit and lies sometimes teetered into the completely unrealistic—sometimes they sped so quickly off his teeth that he scarcely recognized his voice or what he was actually saying. Lies were such beautiful, dumb things.

"You know she totally bought it." 

It was Shikamaru's turn to snicker. 

"Yeah," he replied sardonically, "that's why she _totally_ failed you." 

Once again, another heated scowl was tossed at the back of Shikamaru's head, which went distinctly unheeded as he proceeded to unload his book bag unto an empty table. Naruto begrudgingly followed him.

After taking an exasperated look at the thousands of books stacked tenderly in the carefully aligned shelves, Naruto sighed loudly and plopped into a chair. He ducked his head beneath his arms.

"I don't even know where to begin." He mumbled into the sleeve of his jacket. A few blessed seconds of silence passed (Naruto hoped Shikamaru had given up and left him to fend for himself) until a thunderous crash sounded on the table. Naruto jumped up-right abruptly and nearly fell out of his chair. Towering over him, Shikamaru smiled with a hand on top of a heap of crusty books. 

"For me?" Naruto cried, glancing from the thick books to his friend. He shook his head.

"_For me._" He corrected. "I have a project too, you know. Even though it's bothersome, I do have to set a good example for you to follow." 

"Tch, whatever." Naruto murmured, getting up and venturing aimlessly into the mass of books on either side of him. He waded pointlessly through the sea of books for ten minutes at least, only half-heartedly searching for his topic, mostly entranced by the old, musty books. He imagined people clad in fashion from the 1940s yanking these books off the shelf while their spines were still stiff and fresh. He could almost see them, scouring through them, their fingers dancing down the taunt page to flip it. 

Then, he realized unexpectedly, as he stumbled into a vast row of cookbooks, that he was quite lost. 

Kousoku currently boasted the third largest Library in all of Japan. Naruto once heard that a Hobo had lived inside it for three months until he was plucked out by a gang of irate librarians. And just two weeks ago a little boy was reported missing only to be discovered hours later wandering fruitlessly through the shelves. 

At first he didn't panic---the library wasn't _that_ big. It was only _3__rd_largest after all. People didn't stay lost in the library, they only temporally misplaced themselves. He continued onwards, searching futilely for any resemblance of the place he had left Shikamaru. He only panicked when he ran straight back into the cookbooks for the third time. 

He began to weave hastily through the shelves, desperately searching for where they ended, but they simply went on and on. Finally, after several long minutes of ineffective searching, he caught sight of the main desk and, exhaling with relief, slid to the floor. 

_All libraries should be burned to the ground,_ he thought as he laid his head back against a row of books. As if his thoughts were transmitted out loud, the books his head rested on responded by sliding back and out the other side, causing his skull to bounce violently against the shelf. A searing pain slid across the back of his head as a couple of frizzy haired librarians at the front desk turned to glare. Rubbing the fresh knot planted on the back of his head, he bent forward and reached his hand as far as he could through the bottom shelf to retrieve the books that had fallen over on the other side. That was when he read some of the titles. 

_A Cure to Aging: Is Immortality a Fantasy or Future Fact? _

_Halting Cell Death._

Naruto's eyes widened slightly as he read the title on the fading, red spine of the next book.

_Aging: A process. _

Sometimes the world was frighteningly convenient, but he was not complaining in the least. His key to passing science and finally breaking that dastardly tradition was just a mere ten inches from his finger tips. Reaching as far as his hand would stretch, he slowly inched his way towards the book getting closer—closer—closer until—

A pallid hand suddenly appeared in his limited line of view on the other side and scooped up the book with ease. Naruto's hand fell limply as he watched a pair of black converse begin to stalk carelessly away.! Seeing as Naruto never with held his colorful comments, or even reviewed them in his head before they were ushered out his mouth, he had an aggravated reply on his lips in seconds. 

"Hey, you ass-hole, that's my damn book!" 

The sneakers faltered forward, as if the wearer had stumbled for a moment. The black shoes then turned around cautiously.

"Yeah, that's right bastard." Naruto said, trying to edge his head through the small gap between the shelves to lift a better look from his book thief. "I'm talking to you." But, just as his eyes caught a quick glimpse of the back of a boy with thick, black hair—the bandit bolted. 

Naruto instinctively attempted to pursue him, but readily bashed his head against the top of the shelf (again), hurling bright green spots into his eyes. The knot in his head throbbed furiously. Stating a very lively word that made the librarians at the front desk wince, he trailed quickly after the thief. 

Darting left and right, past row after row, Naruto chased the ass relentlessly, catching only peeks at the person's appearance. From what he could tell, the boy was several inches taller then him, but probably around his age with black hair and very, very pale skin—the type of skin one only develops from never going outside or employing too much skin care cream. He figured the elusive boy was a geek who couldn't handle confrontations without peeing in his pants. 

Finally, after several minutes, he lost him and found that he was once again in the _god-forsaking_ cookbooks. A long string of curses rowdily sang out through the quiet, stillness of the library. He had been gone from Shikamaru for at least 30 minutes and needed to head back soon before he made him worry, but he was not one to give up so easily. That boy had deliberately taken the book he had reached his hand out for, why? 

Slowly, he crept like a stalking predator from shelf to shelf, peeking around corners swiftly, and then moving on to the next with no luck. But then, as he reached the last row, he spied a black door on the wall labeled 'storage'. A devilish smile curled on his face. Somehow, he knew that boy was in there. _Where else would a wimp hide but in a closet?_

It was like it was instinct. _He's in there._

Slowly, he put his hand on the doorknob and then pushed open the door with all his might. 

"Aha! You little…"

Naruto's words were suddenly misplaced as he stared on at the figure standing with back facing him, leaning with one hand on the wall, and the other on the juncture between his neck and collarbone. The boy was not little by any means—or even a boy for that matter. Even though he appeared to be about the same age as himself, his elegant, mature stance was that of an old professor who'd seen the world. It demanded a certain respect as it seemed to command the very essence of time. Naruto, for the first time ever in all his sixteen years, was wordless next to this--person. Glancing down at the floor, he found his book lying there pointlessly, as if warning him to run. 

"_Leave._" 

Even though it was Naruto's first time ever meeting this boy, he could tell that his voice was pained and constricted. The intensity of the one word that had escaped from him was enough to lapse Naruto into a second bout of silence. He simply stood there dumbly, staring at the quivering back of the formerly-known-ass-now-vampire-man. The boy obviously noticed the lack of movement and spoke again, this time with a stronger, haughtier voice that rumbled deeply inside the small closet. It almost seemed to resemble a resilient satin. 

"Didn't you just hear me, dobe? I said _leave_." 

_Dobe? DOBE?_ Just who the hell did this boy think he was? Naruto may not have been in the top 30 (okay, maybe 50) of his class, but he was definitely not dead last. There were two things in this world that made him truly enraged and cracks against his level of intelligence was one. Naruto barely felt the words graze his lips as they hurriedly soared out his mouth. 

"Like hell! You stole my book, made me bang my head against the freaking shelf **again,** and got me lost in the goddamn cook books." Naruto stepped forward, raising a scornful finger up into the air. That instinct was back, telling him to stay."I demand an apology---a really freaking good one too." 

The boy groaned and clutched his shoulder tighter. Naruto could make out the stark blue veins that seemed to glow beneath the boy's wan skin. 

"I don't owe you—haaa—anythin—mmm." The fury inside of Naruto ebbed away as he realized this boy was in some semblance of pain. A small perspiration seemed to be collecting on the pallid hand exposed and his entire body was shaking, as if he was battling with his legs to stay on his feet. Naruto became even more alarmed when the boy suddenly dropped to the ground and grasped his shoulder with both hands. 

"Hey—Are you okay?" He questioned, stepping forward hesitantly. 

"No! Don't come an—mmm—closer—"

….Naruto couldn't stop himself from moving forward even if he had wanted to. 

In those next few moments, something completely strange and unordinary occurred; something that made the stiff, straight line this world was forged upon waver and crack completely. Naruto was drawn to this boy, as if his legs were no longer his own to control and they followed the path on their own accord. He suddenly felt disjointed and surreal—as if his mind was in three places at once. Colors were more vibrant then usual—the black of the boy's hair and clothing manifested the appearance of a giant abyss that he was about to topple into. His limbs were guided by tiny invisible strings—he felt like he was a floating, disembodied entity. 

He only half-noted the fact the boy had stood up and faced Naruto. They were abruptly very close. Nothing seemed to stick, all his thoughts and feelings seemed to slide off his mind like butter on a linoleum floor. He couldn't for the life of him focus on the boy's face; he sensed it was sharp and pale but the boy's eyes had him cornered. They swallowed and chewed him in their profound dark hue. 

"Damn it, why now?" 

The boy's words didn't make any sense as they collected ineffectually in Naruto's ears. 

Then, he kissed him. Pale hands assertively grabbed Naruto's cheeks and the two boys' faces were slammed together with what seemed to be another force entirely. Brawny, wet lips massaged his own with an unnerving confidence and Naruto felt his legs, which were now two vindictive, useless columns of jelly, stumble backwards. His back finally collided against the wall, mouth opening slightly on impact. Something disgustingly thin and slimy glided into his mouth and scooped the life out of him. 

He was repulsed by the fact that he did not have a single ounce of control over himself. He was reverted into a willing lump of fleshy putty that could not so much as even mummer a weak protest against the mouth that was overwhelming him as if to consume him completely. The two slowly slid down the wall until they finally rested in a tangled heap in the floor. Why couldn't he bite the offending appendage in his mouth? Why couldn't he move, damn it? 

He had no idea how many dizzying minutes or seconds had passed, he only knew that the edges of his vision were beginning to become fuzzy and distorted. He required air—desperately. And as if responding to his need, the lips finally drew away. A chorus of panting filled the small, silent closet, as both boys sat in the moment and attempted to retrieve their lost thoughts that had slipped away in the heated seconds. Feeling began to snake itself back into his body and Naruto was pleased to see his fingers twitch as they traveled up to touch his swollen, burning lips. They were still wet.

"Who—"He wheezed, almost flinching at the frailty of his voice. "—what—Why?" 

Naruto was agitated to see the other boy had recovered his breath more quickly than him. Now that his mind didn't feel as drugged and disoriented as before, he could soak in the other's face more clearly. The boy's face was faultless and pale—smooth lines traced a long, slim nose down to lips that were slightly thin. A slim jaw glued the face together and added a conceited, though graceful edge to his appearance. His eyes were so dark of a brown they appeared almost black and limitless. Naruto scowled faintly—he knew he would be very very **very** aggravated when this weird, dull feeling faded away. 

"I'm Sasuke Uchiha." The boy stood up, brushing his blue jeans off needlessly on the way, and loomed over Naruto, smirking like an untamed wild cat. "As for what—Well, I believe that's what they call a kiss. I believe we've just engaged into a bit of a make-out session." All the blood currently residing inside Naruto at the moment flooded into his face. 

"As for why—that's a bit more difficult to explain." The boy dubbed Sasuke bent down and collected something off the floor. He turned his black, mocking eyes back to Naruto. "If you are as simple minded as you appear to be, then I can't get too complicated without completely loosing you so I'll just say this—I'm cursed and now, so are you. " 

_Simple-minded? _Naruto was absolutely elated to feel a rush of anger sweep through his veins, (any sensation was better then the frightening absence of it). Sweet, wonderful words began to fill his mouth as he prepared to launch a steady stream of insults. 

"You mother fu--"

Another mordant smirk smoothed over the boy's lips. 

"See you around." 

--And with that, the boy exited the closet with nothing more then a flimsy wave, leaving Naruto inside to fume heavily with a mounting rage. Attempting to chase after him, he found his legs were just too wobbly to do anything but sit. Also, a ghastly ache seized his stomach, like he had performed two thousand crunches. Every time he moved, a terrible pain raced through his limbs. He sat still, sulking beneath the weight of his bewilderment and fury with no one to throw it at. He had been made fun of, drugged, kissed, called stupid, and then brushed off—and to top it all off…

Naruto opened the door suddenly and flung his head through the crack, ignoring the horrible, sudden pain that cried through him. He howled with all his built-up might at the receding black figure. 

"Hey you bastard! You took my book!!" 

Naruto had been in the library for almost three grisly, agonizing hours before Shikamaru had finally given up on his friend's limited attention span and let him go. Taken that he had only actually worked on his project for 30 minutes of that allotted time, Naruto still had to admit those were a few of the worst hours of his young life. 

After his run-in with the pervert in the closet, he had somehow found his way back to the lone table in the army of non-fiction to find Shikamaru, oh wonder of all wonders, sleeping and drooling all over an opened book. The second he arrived, however, he had woken up abruptly and sat up, beady eyes alert. He had stared at him strangely from then on and had asked him continually if he was alright, pleading to know whether something had happened in the hour he was missing. Naruto could not find it in himself to explain just what had partaken in that one, terrifying hour. It was shameful enough he had to live with the fact he had kissed another boy—no, he had been mouth raped by another boy—he didn't want anyone else knowing. He simply tossed him a PG 13 version, where he got lost and chased an asshole across the entirety of the library because he had thieved his book. He also divulged to him the nature of his stomach ache. 

After that, Shikamaru had tagged behind him like a sullen watch dog as he collected the necessary books and worked on his paper. But, his stomach ache did not subside—it rolled around in his belly with the same intensity of which it first commenced. Finally, his friend had relented and allowed Naruto to exit the hellish double doors and step into the biting frigid taste of liberation. 

His walk home was brisk and cold; Naruto lived in a neighborhood that required one to keep a steady pace when strolling home at night, lest they be accompanied by people of the wrong sorts. When he arrived home, he found that Iruka was already there, sitting at the kitchen table grading papers. He glanced up anxiously as he entered.

"Naruto, just where the hell have you been?" The man interrogated, slamming his red pencil down on the unstable table that shook in response. "It's dark and you know how I feel about you being out after sunset." 

Naruto loved to be fussed over because for most of his life he had had nobody to care whether he breathed at all. 

"I was at the library with Shikamaru." He replied pleasantly, unraveling his scarf from his face and unzipping his jacket. Iruka's eyes narrowed.

"Honest!" He cried. "I have a project I have to do for science and he dragged me to the library to work on it."

"What's it on?"

"Processes. I got aging, but I don't even know any real _old_ people. I mean, I know they don't poop as often and they go to nursing homes when they hit 78, but other then that I'm stumped. I think he's just trying to get back at me for making him come in during summer school."

"I'm sure that's not his—Oh my god! Naruto, what happened?" 

Naruto had unshed his jacket completely, revealing his white logo t-shirt stained in the belly with dark scarlet blood.

"What?" The blonde boy questioned as he stared down at himself. He glanced at Iruka pleadingly. 

"I swear, I don't even know where this came from. I haven't even taken off my jacket since scho—"

"Save it." Iruka glared disapprovingly at him and then sighed as he drew up. "I'll get the antiseptic." 

When Iruka had him lay down on the couch and lift up his shirt, there had been a fair amount of still-gooey blood pooled on his skin. But, when he cleaned it away, there had been no scratch or cut or any measurable wound.

Needless to say, Naruto had quite a bit on his mind as he flopped unto his bed and settled beneath his sheets; so much that his plagued brain disallowed sleep to occur. He spent most of the night very much awake and staring up at the strange patterns in the plaster on his ceiling and occasionally tracing his lips with the tips of his fingers. 

Another sat awake that night as well, observing him as he tossed furiously in his covers from atop the fire escape on the building next door. 

"Naruto…Uzumaki…" 

A voice cooed softly. The boy with dark hair leaned forward slightly. 

"What am I going to do with you?" 

* * *

Author's note (again): I despise the cookbook section. Forgive the grammar –sob- review plleassee! 

IT's been revised like crazy. 


	2. He lives in a box

**The Curse of the Red Vine Lovers**

**Chapter two: He lives in a box. **

**The Crazed and/or Apologetic author's note: **This was revised tooooooooooo! Whahahahahahahahaha!

I decided to revise because this story is over two years old and it needed to be updated writing style wise. Also, I had really terrible humor. That needed to burn. Plot is mostly the same, but the dialogue might be different! 

_

* * *

_

Excerpt from _**Rumsfield's Extensive Guide to Most Every Curse. **__Chapter 14. Page 496_

"…_Bonding curses are possibly the least popular of all curses, exempting of course the blood-boiling curses which create frequent and almost unbearable pain when in the 'marked' or 'cursed situation', i.e. when an angry housewife curses her husband to feel terrible pain every time he strolls absently into a pub._

_A bonding curse is simply the tying or knotting of two essences of a certain boundary of the body. In the ancient Egyptian times, high priests tied the essences of the laboring slaves' sweat together so when they began to toil under the high sun they could not escape one another without feeling an immense pain in their pores. Even through the hundreds of different variations of the Bonding Curse, the premise is mostly the same: the forceful act of fastening an essence so the curse's candidates cannot escape one another. Some are reversible, some aren't. Some activate in a matter of moments, others can lie dormant for hundreds of years. The most popular of these is possibly the Bribe of the Black Bird curse which is just the tying of two human's pinkie fingers' essences, which in turn keeps a promise rather forcefully. _

_Of course, without dispute, the most detested bonding curse is at the same time the rarest to have ever been cast. It is the literal knotting of two unknowing people's souls; the formation of a potent bond that compels two persons to be together, even if it is utterly against their will. The name has a very ironic ring to it: The Curse of the Red Vine Lovers."_

* * *

Naruto hated feeling corned. It was an abhorrence that struck at his very basic nature; an animalistic instinct to avoid any situation which thrust him against a wall and left him caged. He became an animal at those times—eyes dilated, focused and pointed like a slick needle; hair frazzled; lips quivering. He only had two choices at this point: Whether to cower or bare his fangs. 

Naruto was no coward. He always bared his fangs. 

It had flooded him gradually, this feeling, like he was stuck in a box steadily sinking to the bottom of the sea. It had begun a week ago, the day after he had returned home from the library with the mysterious red stain on his shirt. Because of his more violent, brawling years in middle school, Iruka had grown accustomed to whipping out the first aid kit whenever he stumbled home with various blood spatters all over his clothes. There was no measure to the extreme guilt he felt every time Iruka sighed and cast his dejected eyes upon him, antiseptic in hand ready to clean his wounds. Naruto promised to his guardian every instance after it he would not fight back when somebody pushed or bantered him—he would cower. He would not bare his fangs. 

But his ethereal promises shattered under the weight of the animal instinct that growled on its haunches inside of him, and sure enough, he would totter home the next week decorated in black and blue badges of his inability to control himself. Though, people grew tired of picking fights with him in high school. In its dank, gray halls he was safe from disappointing Iruka, the one man that had believed in him. It had been one year since he had been involved in a fight and that was why, he guessed, Iruka was unrelenting. 

"Grounded." He had announced to a flabbergasted Naruto. "Indefinitely." 

After asking just what the hell indefinitely meant, he had been padlocked inside of his room. There, in the boundaries of his white walls, he had been forced to stalk the door, protesting his confinement with weak shouts of how the blood wasn't his—he didn't know how it got there—why didn't he believe him? 

Thus, Naruto's severe grounding only lasted for a matter of hours seeing as Iruka could hardly get any work done with a brat wailing loudly in the apartment. But the punishment still remained…he was not allowed to go anywhere after school. He was to report home right after the door's let out. 

"How will you know if I've gone anywhere?" He had interrogated the next day at breakfast. "You're not here when I get back."

Iruka didn't even look up from behind the veil of his morning newspaper. 

"Believe me. _I'll know_." 

His icy voice had been enough reassurance in Naruto's mind; He would not dick off and disobey his suddenly foreboding guardian. 

But it was a week into his imprisonment and the animal inside of him reared and roared as he was forced into the the small apartment everyday--the monotony was sending aches through his skull. The only times he felt truly liberated were in the brisk walks home, babbling gleefully next to his only companion. Then, on Tuesday, Shikamaru just stopped coming to school. Naruto would've gone over to his apartment to check on him, only he didn't know exactly where he lived (he had an idea, but not which house). So, his only freedom lost its sheen as he had to travel by himself to and from school; completely isolated from any companionship whatsoever. The animal inside of his belly began scratching at his cage. 

On top of everything, his stomach still felt a ghost of the pain which had seized it fiercely a week before. He also couldn't help but jump and run frantically away from every black haired pale person he happened to bump into, (and it being Japan, that happened to be quite a few). Even his dreams were plagued by the black-haired boy; most every night he had dreamt that his dark, limitless eyes had hypnotized him into walking off a cliff. He would stop right before the edge to see the full white lips smirking. Then as if it was only natural, he's step off into the empty air. But, he always woke up before he felt the pull of gravity and thus his sleep pattern had been thrown off. Iruka had been commenting on how grumpy he was after he woke up. 

To summarize, the past week had sucked. 

Tuesday became the breaking point when Orochimaru-sensei returned their projects. With nothing better to do then sit in his room and wallow, Naruto had actually **completed **his assignment, digging through a multitude of books and extracting ideas he hardly could discern but wrote down nonetheless. He expected more than an A on this report for not only did he weave complex ideas around the outline, but he also tacked a two page conclusion stating confidently that death could one day be cured. He expected more than an 'F'. 

But that was the grade slashed and bleeding at the top of his project. There, right above his title, was a wound to his intelligence; an infected gash spewing his stupidity and a pungent smell. Rage roared through him. _I don't understand, godamnit. I worked so hard, I'm not this stupid. I can't be this stupid. How the hell does this happen? _

The animal fractured the walls of his cage and pounced out into liberation. 

"What the hell?" He exclaimed loudly, slamming his paper ferociously down unto his desk. All movement in the class halted; every breath remained tight and safe inside the lungs. Any noise above a whisper and the breathless voice of their Sensei seemed almost too foreign to fathom inside the white-wash walls. Orochimaru-sensei slowly turned from the girl he was delivering a paper to and gazed at Naruto evenly. 

"Whatever is the matter, Uzumaki-kun?" His quiet, low voice echoed in the silent room. The buzz of the florescent lights played like a soundtrack in the background.  
"What is it you're so displeased with?" 

"My paper!" He interjected, fury compelling his body to spring out from behind his desk. The monster was growling, his fangs flashing wrathfully from his pink gums. 

"I worked really hard on it! I did all kinds of research and I even _went to the library. _Doesn't that count for something?" 

Orochimaru smiled calmly, folding his arms and staring at him at him with those detached eyes that could not decide whether they were yellow or brown. Naruto felt his fingernails clawing the tender skin of his palm.

"Just because you put forth effort, doesn't mean you'll succeed. It's a basic aspect to life," he said with the same disconnection a doctor informs a patient of cancer with. "Life is opportunity and probability. Hard-work does not have to be repaid." 

"But it should be!" He cried desperately, snatching his paper off his desk and chunking it to the floor. "I worked hard on it, harder than I've ever worked on anything before! I did everything you wanted! What else could you have possibly wanted?"

"More." The teacher said. "I wanted more. Isn't that what we all need? More?"

"But-! The syllabus! I- that's not right."

"You supplied me with a moronic outline that detailed nothing." Orochimaru-sensei's light brown eyes glittered eerily for a moment. "Tell me, Naruto, how does if feel to know that the world does not guarantee results for hard work? How does it feel to understand now that fairytales and myths have lied to us for ages? –That dreams don't always come true, even if the protagonist gives it his all? Hm? Does it hurt?" The man's sharp, thin lips cast out a cruel grin that was as slick and cold as lonesome steel columns jutting from the ground where a building once stood. "_Does it burn?_"

The animal whimpered as Naruto snatched his paper off the floor and hastily exited the classroom, slamming the door loudly behind him. He had bared his fangs only to be whipped and beaten. He lost. His heavy, angry footsteps did not lighten until he was safely outside the school building and behind the veil of a cooling vent. Sliding down against the brick wall, his uniform catching momentarily on the bumpy texture, he plopped down unto the yellow grass and sighed. His paper was still wadded up in his hands and he smoothed it out to take one more glance at it-- just to make sure the grade hadn't changed.

He flipped mindlessly through the pages, watching the red marks marring his words flash by in transient blurs . Right beneath his would-be-amazing conclusion, Orochimaru-sensei had inscribed in his loopy, long handwriting: 

'_There is no cure to death.'_

* * *

At three thirty, right as doors let out, a tall, grimy-looking man wearing a black hoodie and sporting a long, tangling brown beard strolled unto the sidewalk's juncture in front of the school's gates. He did not turn to look at the school children rushing out, swinging their bags carelessly; he simply stood there as if his feet had decided on taking root in that specific spot. As they walked through the gate, a small cluster of boys nudged each other in their sides as they spotted the unclean man. Eyes gleaming, they ran forward excitedly and faced him. 

The chubbiest of the group frowned as all eyes shifted unto him and he began to slowly rummage through his bag. Moments later, his hand emerged, clenched around several bills of yen. In the presence of the eager eyes, he sighed and relinquished his money into the open palm of the filthy man. They quickly received a pack of cigarettes in return and they clambered off, whooping loudly and patting the portly bespectacled boy on the back. 

Naruto watched this from behind the cooling vent and he waited with his lip tucked in his teeth until the boys disappeared into the vibrant mass of students. Timidly, he stepped out from behind his hiding spot and stalked across the street in direction of the silent, dirty man, his unused lunch money jingling softly against his thigh.

Naruto hated feeling cornered. It was the fiery sensation that sent the animal inside him bucking. He never cowered. He always bared his fangs, but sometimes he lost; actually, most of the time he was defeated. 

In middle school, his arms were just not burly enough to shield him from black eyes and blue lumps. In high school, his mind was just not good enough to protect him from failing marks and disapproving stares. When he lost, he felt the need to stealthily strike at something; something that signified defined categorization. When he used be squashed in middle school, he would run home, punch a pillow and then decimate his room, tearing down all his posters and hurling his CDs against the wall in a sightless fury. It made him feel more in control by destroying the organization; by creating a mess of the rules. 

It was at this time he felt truly absolute. 

Now, his room had lost its amazing ability to satisfy the pitiful monster whimpering inside him. He needed a larger rebellion then it could provide him with; he desired to act upon something that defied the very heart of society and law. 

--And that was why he was sitting cross legged on the fifth floor of the abandoned hotel building on the corner of Takanawa west, with a cigarette looped in between in his lips. He didn't really like smoking, it made him feel like he had swallowed hot charcoal, but the liberating feeling it instilled was enough to bare the raw, flaming sensation in his throat. Capturing the smoke in his mouth, he slowly allowed it to spill from his lips. He hazily watched the gray, wispy rings spiral upwards to the ceiling, noting absently the way it seemed to evaporate as it collided against the paneling. 

"You do understand that's against the law, and more importantly, bad for you, correct?" 

Naruto spat the cigarette out immediately and put it out. A seemingly familiar voice sounded from somewhere in between the naked wooden beams in front of him.

"Who's there?!" He howled, skirting around the floor space and warily peeking around a column. Suddenly, the entire building seemed darker and more ominous than before. The walls still boasted slivers of its antique, flowery wallpaper from the almost indefinable times before, but mostly the entire structure had been stripped down to its bare wood essentials; not even the divisions of the separate rooms remained. When he stepped forward heavily, the uncovered floor grumbled and shivered violently beneath his weight. He had heard it was once a ritzy, high-class hotspot for a budding city and while it may have appealed to the posh, rich party people in the past, Naruto knew that the only guests this hotel attracted now were hobos and crack addicts looking for a free place to crash. 

Hesitantly, he called out again. "Hello? I didn't mean to disturb your um---" _What do crack heads call their homes again? Iruka calls them…wait what does he call them? "--_crack nest. I'll just be, um, leaving, okay?" 

"Crack nest?" The voice replied, a distinct amusement fluttering inside it. 

_I'm sorry Shikamaru—_He thought miserably, as he took a tentative step backwards._ Gomen! Gomen! Gomen! You told me not to come in her. You said it was infested with crazy crack-heads who ripped little boys' limbs apart and drank their blood…but I always thought you were exaggerating. Oh, damn it, I don't want to die! And Iruka…I swore to Iruka I wouldn't come here either. He'll ground what's left of me! _

"Well, it does seem rather fitting doesn't it?" The baritone snickered. Naruto began devising escape roots in his mind—banking on the fact that crack addicts had to be incredibly bad runners. Or was crack the drug that made you faster? Was that an actual drug or was that on the television show he'd seen two weeks ago? 

Offhandedly, Naruto noticed that the voice seemed to be echoing from a gaping black hole in the ceiling where a toilet used to stand on the next floor. It was standing over the only exist available in the stripped room. Maybe he could tip-toe quietly beneath it and then run out once he cleared it. 

"Um, I really didn't mean to barge in." He babbled, slowly creeping forward. _Keep him distracted!_ His mind yelled. 

"You gotta do what you gotta do, they say and what you're doing is completely fine! Honestly! It's great we have drug-enjoying people like you in life to um…be there. I'm a big personal fan of meth myself…eat it all the time."

Finally, he had crept wordlessly underneath the black gap. But curiosity got the better of him and he peered upwards. Thankfully, there was no one there.

"H-Hello?" He questioned quietly, gazing into the profound dark that appeared boundless. Anxiously, he waited a couple of seconds with his fingers nestled tightly in his sweating palms. When no reply emerged, he sighed, calmed and prepared to dart off down the stairs. 

"Hello." 

His head jerked up immediately and spotted a very pale face that contrasted with the overwhelming darkness. On instinct, his hands flung up to shield his face from an imaginary onslaught on his limbs and his lips released a rather high-pitched and just flat-out unmanly scream. 

"Ahh! PLEASE DON'T CHOP ME!" 

Suddenly, a large tremor on the floor beneath him signaled a new arrival in the room. Slowly, he lowered his hands and gasped.

"Mouth-molester!" 

The black-haired mouth-molester in question tilted a quizzical eyebrow toward his hairline and ogled Naruto curiously. 

"Is that what I am now?" 

"Yes, you crazy pervert!" Naruto said crossly, banishing him with an imposing, outstretched finger. "You k-kissed me and you well…first off, you don't even know me. Second, we're both _men._" 

"Boys." The perverse boy corrected, folding his arms. "Firstly, boys kiss each other all the time."

"No they don't you gross sick—"

"—And secondly, I'll admit I didn't know you at our first encounter."

_Encounter?!_ Naruto almost fainted.

" But, I've been forced to follow you for the past week or so. So I think I've gotten a pretty good idea who you are." The pervert affirmed as a smirk appeared in response to Naruto's flabbergasted expression. 

"You WHAT?" He yelled, the fragile, splintered window panes rattling fearfully in their frames. 

"I've been following you. How much more do I have to say to get the point through your thick skull?" He sighed, rubbing his temples with two long fingers. Naruto was strongly reminded of Shikamaru and almost waited to hear a quiet 'bothersome'. 

"At seven, you wake up, swipe your alarm clock to the floor, and topple out of your bed unto a dirty pile of clothes. Then, you stumble into the bathroom, usually ramming groggily into the threshold in doing so, and _no_; I am not a pervert who watches whatever you do in there. But it does take you a while to come out, sort of _girly_ if you ask me." 

Naruto's stomach bottomed out. That was his schedule _exactly. _

He was not accustomed to this situation—he could comprehend and handle other conditions, but this? This seemed to be a scene that fell right out of a suspense/horror flick—he never imagined he could identify with the screaming, whiny girl protagonist who was being stalked by an ex-lover. 

"Then you extract a shirt from said pile and throw it on along with your uniform and proceed to breakfast where you talk with the older man you live with—is he your dad? You two look nothing alike. 

"After you finish stuffing down those sickening instant noodles, which are absolutely terrible for you by the way—they'll give you heart disease-- You glance at your watch, freak out, and sprint to school where you are compelled to climb the fence because you are habitually tardy and from then on, all I can do is sit outside or on top of the roof and wait for you to finally stagger out of school, ranting and raving about something or other and make your way home. 

You know? You're pretty boring, dobe. I would've expected my cursed mate to be a little less predictable. This is probably the most interesting thing you've done in the past week." 

_What do I do? _The question swerved swiftly through his mind, coercing his right foot to steal a pace back. He had never been faced with such a situation like this before. Yes, he'd been manhandled by his peers before, but they had never crossed the threshold beneath his belt. There were unseen lines sketching the dissimilarity of the two abuses that only those of a perverse nature totally sidestepped. He could handle fists, kicks, but this? What was even 'this'? _Do I run? Do I scream for help? _The company of crack-addicts didn't seem unpleasant anymore. 

Naruto retreated with another step and found he was cornered by the wall. The animal inside him sniveled. The floor beneath him began to quiver with his weight. 

"Listen dobe," The boy stated irately. "We've gotten off on the wrong foot. I'm Uchiha Sasuke." He held out his hand which hung there quietly in the air as Naruto examined it. There was a moment it seemed as if he was going to actually place his hand into the waiting palm of the man dubbed Sasuke, but after a session of silent seconds passed, his hand still remained suspended pointlessly in the air. 

"I didn't think it would be this way." The boy said more to himself than to Naruto. His hand fell unceremoniously to his side and he stepped forward. After a long sigh, Sasuke focused his pointed black eyes on Naruto, who all of a sudden felt the need to squirm and move out of the way of his sharp gaze. 

"There's something I need to talk to you about, Naruto." 

"How the hell do you know my name?" Naruto snapped, feeling his face scrunch up into a nasty scowl. 

Sasuke tched. Naruto had a strange feeling his sound was a lot like Shikamaru's peeved gesture of stuffing his hands into his pockets. 

"I told you I've been following you for the past week." His charcoal eyes rolled. "Are you truly this much of an idiot?"

"Shut up, you dumb bastard!—"

Sasuke took a step forward. Naruto gulped down the rest of his insults and opted to be more polite. 

"—I'm a little confused—"

He took another step. 

"—And you're a really shady person to be hanging out here—"

…Another step. 

"—I don't even know you!"

…And another step—

Until Uchiha Sasuke's thin, long nose was a small span from his own. Hesitantly, he looked directly into his eyes, which upon closer inspection appeared a lot more brown than far away. They seemed to contain slivers of a light, sandy tan bursting forth from the pupil like a small cinnamon nova. He swallowed the sudden knot of panic that had rendered his voice box utterly ineffective. Clearing his throat loudly as if to suggest his violated proximity, he scowled into the gap-like irises. 

"Besides, you're a pervert who has cornered me in an old, empty building where you could do anything you wanted at anytime because we're five stories up and the only one who would come to rescue me would be a crack-head who would rip me apart anyway _and_ I've never been in a situation before where I had a creepy ass stalker and I'm just about ten seconds away from kicking you swiftly in the balls and running for my big, muscular friend Shikamaru who will easily kick your ass." Naruto sucked in a mouthful of air.

Sasuke simply stared; his eyes gleaming. "Are you finished?" 

"Yeah, that's about it." Naruto snapped. "So, I'd appreciate it if you just walked away right now unless you want to be pummeled to the ground." 

"Oh please," Sasuke idly brushed the dust caked on his shoulders off. Grimacing, Naruto noted that the decrepit building spilled dust like seeds as if hoping to spread its roots. "You're the size of a middle-schooler. You'd probably just cry and wet yourself." 

His face suddenly engulfed in heat, Naruto exclaimed, "I can be hella ferocious! one time I punched the crap out this kid and he lost his tooth AND was in—"

Suddenly, two hands slammed on either side of his head and against the shabby, unsteady wall. The entire structure trembled as dust sprinkled from the ceiling and refracted the orange, afternoon sunshine so that the whole room seemed almost surreal. Naruto gazed wildly into the boy's black, calm eyes. 

"Do you do this often?"

"Do what?" Muttered Naruto quietly, his voice small and subdued. A primal, quivering fear had muzzled the animal inside him. It seemed to be seeping slowly from his brain to his toes, as if a cool stream of water was dripping from his ears. 

"Get people off topic purposely so you don't have to hear the truth?" 

"You're full of shit." 

Sasuke smirked slightly. "Maybe, but I think that might just be our only common bond." 

"Screw you." The blonde boy spat, attempting to dart out from beneath the man's sturdy arms. Sasuke responded by leaning in closer, until his nose was almost scraping Naruto's. He could once again see the small, cinnamon petals that sprouted from his dark shining pupils. This guy was beyond strange—didn't he understand the concepts of personal bubbles? 

"That's all fine and wonderful, but for now, we need to talk and I'd prefer it if you didn't open your mouth and distract me. It's fairly important." 

"I-fine." His mouth clicked shut. Naruto glared silently up at Sasuke, who smirked in return. 

"There. That wasn't so difficult, was it? See?" The dark-haired boy's leer widened and his eyes danced with amusement. "You're cuter when you're silent." 

In one fluid movement, Naruto swiftly kicked Sasuke in the shin and darted underneath and out from the two strapping appendages locking him in place. But, before he could successfully stand up and skirt away, a hand latched unto his arm which unbalanced his squatting legs and his rear end plopped hard against the floor. More of the building's frantic seeds sailed softly down through the air and landed in his eyes. 

----But none of this seemed to register to Naruto at the moment. The only thing his mind could fixate on was the wan hand that was wrapped firmly around his own bare arm. It felt like the boy's hand was extremely hot, as if his fingers were the coiling, orange wires on a sizzling stove. But it was not an unpleasant heat, for the warmth quickly perused his brain, boiling it until nothing seemed to matter anymore—the fact he had failed his assignment, the fact he was supposed to be home forty minutes ago, the fact he didn't understand the world and the world didn't seem to understand him, the fact he was currently in the presence of a pervert and his chastity was in terrible peril—nothing seemed strong enough to dig into his mind anymore. 

Everything was hazy and furry—the very air that had always treated him as a foreigner now petted and cooed him like a child. He was a pure entity and the parasites scattered on his skin were withering up and falling off completely. Hazily, he glimpsed back at the widened black eyes that were staring strangely at him, as if they were veiling a particularly intense thought.

Then the hand drew back and reality and the way of the world slapped him across the face like a frozen, soggy fish. Quickly, he examined his arm and found to be just as it had always been, puny and tan. Glancing back and forth from his rather normal limb and Sasuke's pale hand, he queried rather breathlessly, "What the hell was that?" 

"What I was attempting to tell you about." Sasuke affirmed, rubbing his hand reflexively. He glared sullenly at Naruto.

"We are cursed." 

"Do what?"

Rubbing the skin at the bridge of his nose, he elaborated further in a very uninterested voice. "Cursed. You know, damned to be together for all of eternity."

"Eternity?!" Naruto cried, bolting up right, but the rickety floor seemed to have finally had enough of the constant movement and weight upon its long forgotten supports and suddenly, it gave way, propelling his left leg downwards into a splintery gap. A biting pain seized his calf muscle as he frantically tried to wiggle his trapped limb out. His other leg felt sore from the impact.

"Owww, damn it all, fuc—" (Naruto's mouth proceeded to form quite a mammoth quantity of curse words, some so novel they weren't even present in the dictionary yet.) "—three-armed-gypsy-fuck….Oh hell," He gave it another pathetic jiggle. "It's stuck."

A wide-eyed, but nonetheless impressed Sasuke made to help him out of his current situation, but Naruto viciously shook his head and reared back from him on his hands. 

"I don't need your help." He asserted, his claim based more on fear than an obstinate independence. He didn't know this boy at all; he had already randomly thieved his first kiss and also had taken to voicing very inappropriate things. The entire situation made him exceedingly nervous and he rather wished that Sasuke would fall through an even larger hole than Naruto did, break his pretty (what?) head open and lay unconscious several floors underneath him for five hours while he carefully plucked himself out of the floor and bolted. 

Sasuke responded with a snort and kneeled inches from his fastened figure. Really, what was it with these space issues? Didn't this guy understand common decency entailed a standard of _at least_ eight inches of room between two people at any given time?

"Then, pray tell, just how are you planning on getting out of there?"

Naruto glared hotly, glanced downward at his thigh that was beginning to tingle unpleasantly. He mumbled. "I'll bite my leg off if I need to." 

Sasuke stood up and leaned against a stripped, wooden column with his arms wound around each other. He stared at Naruto, who found it difficult to concentrate on wiggling out of this mess with the glossy black pupils sizing him up. 

"What?" He finally asked irately after minutes of the pointed gazing. Sasuke smirked.

"You're amusing." 

"Woopde, jackass." Naruto huffed. "I'm glad you find my leg being stuck in the floor of a crack house so very funny. You know? I know just the kind of thing that would make you laugh. How about I punch your face in? Then we can share some more giggles together." 

Sasuke's smirk only elongated. The animal inside him began to growl with distaste as he glowered at the supercilious boy. 

"I don't like you." He hissed, as a splinter of wood pierced his knee. Groaning in pain, he attempted to shift his thigh once more. His pants leg seemed to be caught on a splinter of wood. 

"Well, tough. We're _stuck_." Sasuke said, emphasizing his last word sardonically. 

For several unbearable minutes, Naruto wiggled and jiggled his leg, biting his lip with the needle-like pain the wood fragments were dealing to his thigh. After one particularly strong budge, he yelped as he felt a great portion jab through his pants and straight into his knee. A rush of tears overtook the back of his eyes. He shut them quickly, damming the stream that was pleading to fall. 

In his agony muddled mind, he heard soft footsteps vibrate the shaky floor around him. Hesitantly, he looked up and peered into the kneeling boy's eyes. He outstretched his hand, which seemed too pale and cool to be situated in the fading orange sunlight that fastened to the stripped walls and the side of his face. It seemed to kindle a pleasant red fire in his right eye. The only object in the room that did not seem to hot to touch was his pallid, waiting hand. 

"Here, give me your hand." 

"I told you I don't need your help; I can get out of this just fine."

Sasuke snickered, but it was surprisingly not demeaning. It seemed more light. 

"Don't be stubborn." His smile was soft, almost tentative, as if he was afraid that Naruto would mock his tenderness. Naruto felt stricken with the vulnerable curve of his lips and he couldn't help but openly gape at this thin, tiny hint of something not perverted, not insane, not crack-addicted lurking behind this man's face.

"I won't hurt you." He promised lightly, his smile evening out into a displeased frown. He almost looked disappointed at Naruto's silence. The animal inside him stopped growling and hesitantly emerged from the corner. Slowly, Naruto lifted his hand and placed it gently into Sasuke's own, whose fingers softly wrapped around his skin. 

Abruptly, he was enveloped by the mind-numbing, hazy hot sensation that ripped away all lingering hints of logic, but it was not unpleasant in the least. His head may have felt like it was filled to the rim with sweet butter cream icing, but he did not dislike the light-headed delirium it instilled. 

Things were no longer blobs of color as they were last time—everything was clear and defined, just a bit misty around the edges. Naruto registered that Sasuke tugged on his hand and then kneeled down to put his arms around his waist. The warmth flinging chills up his neck, he jerked him gently up and out. 

Naruto stood waveringly on his feet, feeling the heated disorientation leaking from his brain. Sasuke's arms remained around his waist and Naruto was sure if he hadn't of been drowning in a foggy heat only moments ago, that he would be horrified to find his own arms around the pale boy's neck. Their eyes were connected and he couldn't advert them even if he wanted too. It was like a splotch of gum on a sidewalk in the middle of June, impossible to separate.

Languidly, Sasuke drew back, his hands softly tracing the fabric of Naruto's shirt, and turned away. Releasing a breath that had been dutifully clinging to his ribcage, he straightened up slightly and stared wildly at the black tuft of hair and the thin, white neck facing him.

"..Was that…?"

"Yes." Sasuke muttered breathlessly. 

"Why does it…do we…feel that way?"

Sasuke slowly turned around and Naruto noted heatedly that he appeared more composed than himself. The leer on his face was reminiscent of the smug curl that had enveloped his lips earlier. Naruto wondered absently if he had multiple personalities or just severe issues with his self-confidence. 

"I'll explain it later." Sasuke hastily peered over his shoulder as if expecting someone to un-expectantly barge in behind him. "But, for now, we have perhaps a crack-addicted guest, so I'm going to take my leave."

"What do you mean by…" 

The sound of swift footsteps racing up the stairs under the unstable room interrupted him. The building shuddered with the hard, quick steps and dust and grime billowed down from the ceiling, settling all over Naruto's face. 

"I'll see you tonight, Naruto." Sasuke grinned, turning around and bestowing him with the same flippant wave he had dealt a week ago in the closet. He was about to howl a horde of not-so-nice words when a speck of filth lodged in his eyes, and after just mere seconds digging to retrieve it with his pinky, he blinked and looked up. Sasuke had already disappeared. 

"Naruto!" 

A familiar voice erupted from behind him. Naruto spun around and found himself facing a panting Shikamaru. The blonde squirmed when he was graced with a livid glare. 

"Shikamaru?" 

Immediately, Naruto's demeanor brightened considerably. "Hey! Where have you been? You haven't been to school--"

"Just _what the hell_ do you think you are doing here?"

Naruto cringed at his tone. Shikamaru was, for the most part, a very laid back guy who let everything short of murder slide off of him like he was linoleum. He had only seen him really enraged twice, and both of those ghastly times, the fury had never been solely directed at him. The gleam in his friend's typically serene brown eyes was intense and furious. 

"Oh um," Naruto began, trying desperately to keep his voice from squeaking out of his larynx weakly. He had always had a habit of speaking rather high and soft when he was nervous or frightened. "Well, you see Shikamaru…Lately I've just been feeling so crappy and I had to do something so I got a pack of cigarettes and came up here and um…." He trailed off as Shikamaru's eyes seemed to narrow a perilous centimeter with every word.

"_I thought_ I told _you_ to stay out of this place because it's _dangerous."_ Although he spoke evenly, Naruto could feel the rage wafting of his words like a strong breeze. He knew better than to mouth off to Shikamaru at a time like this, but his careless, fumbling lips could not bear to be inert for so long. 

"So?" He retorted. "You're not my guardian." 

Shikamaru's glower intensified as an unreadable emotion coursed over his face. "In retrospect, I'm one of them." 

"Whatever."

"Who was with you?" 

Naruto's hand jerked as he stared blankly at Shikamaru . Had he seen Sasuke? "no one."

His friend took a hazardous step forward. "I saw _somebody_ through the window form the street and I'd like to know _who_ it was." 

"There was no one there." 

Suddenly, Shikamaru snapped and angrily stomped forward, the structure quivering as he did so, and latched unto Naruto's hand. He forcefully led him out of the room. Hobbling clumsily behind him, he began to whine.

"What are you doing?" Naruto howled, twisting his wrist in his friend's frighteningly strong clutch. "Where are we going?!" 

"You were grounded." Shikamaru stated plainly as he vehemently escorted him down the creaking stairs. The blonde had no other choice but to follow awkwardly behind him. 

"And I'm telling Iruka." 

Naruto's jaw snapped open as he stared aghast at the bobbing, black ponytail, swinging furiously with his traitorous steps.

* * *

It had been the worst fight with Iruka he had ever had. 

"I told you _never_ to go into that place again!" 

"But Iruka—"

"It's dangerous! Do you know how many people are killed there every month? _At least fifteen._"

"That's a huge exaggeration!"

"They're drug addicts, Naruto! Honestly, you would think you would _at least_ know better than that!" 

"I DO know better, but you won't listen—"

"There's no excuse for this! You're grades are dropping and you're hiding in dodgy places like this. Are you on drugs? Is that what this is?"

"I'm not on drugs, please Iruka—"

"I didn't raise you to—"

"YOU DIDN'T RAISE ME AT ALL!" 

Silence. Still and glassy, slick and sharp. 

"…How dare you, Naruto. I'm the closest thing to a father you've ever had."

"But you're not him! YOU'RE NOT HIM!" 

"I might as well be. I have legal custody over you! I'm the only thing that has kept you from becoming like the rest of those urchins at that foster home! And just where are they, hm Naruto? How's that old friend of yours Haku?"

A whisper, scarely alive, trailing the floor shamefully. 

"…I dunno…"

"You know very well where he is! He's a fucking prostitute! A drug addict! Kicked out of school for indecent behavior! _He lives in a box, Naruto. A box._ "

"…He was always weird like that though…"

"So where are the rest of them, hm? There were 10 of you! Two dead, Three in jail, five deal drugs and sell themselves to any _fucking pervert that will give them a nickel_, and then there's you. Where do you fit in?" 

"SO WHAT? So what if they're all messed up now! That doesn't mean I am! IT DOESN'T MEAN I'LL BE SCREWED UP BECAUSE THEY WERE!"

"But it doesn't imply that you won't either." 

"FINE! If I'm such a fucking hassle, I'll leave. I'll leave and go find Haku, and share his god dam—"

The sound of flesh colliding against flesh. An inner turmoil that can only be properly depicted through the fingers. 

Iruka had never hit him before. He ran into his room and shut the door.

* * *

The midnight breeze flittered through the window in short gasps, as if the clouds were panting to keep up with the silvery light of the moon. Naruto sat at his desk underneath the great window, one hand supporting his chin and the other tapping a pencil idly against a particularly difficult math problem. Truth be told, they were all extremely hard, which was evident from the scribble marks and eraser shavings that littered the empty page. The wind emitted another quick breath through his open window and his navy curtains jumped and spasmed as its fingers combed through them. 

"Ah, fuck." Naruto finally muttered, hurling his pencil across the room. Sighing, he placed his head into his palms. He couldn't feel anything—it was like his insides had been injected with Novocain. He understood the pain was there, he could feel it throbbing warningly underneath his thoughts, but he just couldn't accept it right then. He just couldn't grasp it without doing something hysterical like decimating his room or retreating somewhere dangerous to smoke a cigarette. But…it was lurking. Waiting for the proper moment to eat him up entirely. 

Naruto hated feeling cornered. And that was why, when Sasuke appeared at his gasping window moments later, perched on the fire escape like a proud cat, he let him in. He opened the window, sighing, and allowed this man he hardly knew entry. 

Because Naruto felt that he might be cornered too. 

* * *

**The very tentative author's note:** MAN! These authors notes are sooo out of date. I had to delete them and it made me distraught. My entire idiot ramblings, swirling down a drain. It's late--! 


	3. Ashtray

**The Curse of the Red Vine Lovers**

**  
Chapter 3: Ashtray**

**The absolutely thrilled author's note:** …My kitten hates me. 

Sooo this is revised now too! Huzzahs are in order! 

I can't write like an 19h century bitchnit, so please forgive this. I read half of Dracula…I decided I'd talk just like them. 

_

* * *

_

A letter from a Mrs. Elizabeth Blackwell to a Miss. Charlotte Rumsfield. May 8_th__, 1848. _

" _Dearest sister, _

_I must be brief, for I fear that Richard will stroll into my room at any moment and peer over my shoulder at my hasty scrawl. I pray that you are doing well, for I am not in any place of which I can come to your immediate side if you fall ill. I do not understand this man that has bestowed me with his last name. In truth, he frightens me. _

_I am also very much afraid that you will not believe my far-fetched tale and write me off as mad, but you must believe me dear sister. Have these thin lips ever graced lies before? _

_Ever since the moment in the rose garden a month before, this Richard Blackwell has pranced behind me as if I am knitted to him with thread. He is my husband under the Lord's eyes, yes, but I cannot bear to think of a life where I am solely his wedded wife. There is another man. There has always been another man. Richard's secretive mercantilism tosses him into the wind and far off leaving a passionate woman alone to the dust of the manor. I am not one to settle like grime on a wardrobe. _

_But, ever since that moment, and please do believe me for I am not creating farces simply to frighten you, __**I cannot leave his side.**__ It is the worst pain imaginable, far worse than the time I toppled down the hill beside our house and broke my arm. I am gripped by this ghostly hand and suddenly, my breath is no longer mine. My hands become cold and numb and my sweat turns to beads of ice on my brow. Every appendage turns to England in winter. I cannot move, for I turn to stone under the pain, and I fall to the floor like a cripple without a cane. And do you know what he does, youngest sister? His lips turn slimy and he smirks. He knows that the only thing that quails the pain and my quick pulse, is his touch. Without it, I'm like a fish separated from his mother the sea. _

_I must part with you now, sister, for I hear him marching proudly up the steps, like he is one of the Queen's own. He knows I'm his porcelain doll, sister, that I will be here always waiting for him to take me off the shelf. I fear the next time we meet I will have glass eyes. _

* * *

Naruto determined that Sasuke was a man of silence. Even though he had spoken openly to him, he hadn't bandied his words about pointlessly; much like he did himself on any occasion he happened to open his mouth for. Every sentence seemed to have been fabricated perfectly in his mind; every verb and adjective carefully molded to portray his thoughts with startling detail. 

Sasuke annunciated clearly and crisply; his rumbling baritone gripped every word he spoke and lifted it into the air like a hoe in the hand of an angry farmer. His very voice clipped off extraneous meanings and flowery language—but Naruto could tell that he thrived in silence. 

As soon as he had wordlessly opened the window a bit wider for Sasuke to climb through, Naruto immediately wished he hadn't. Iruka was somewhere in the diminutive apartment and surely if one of them spoke their voice would carry and he'd have another shouting match to look forward to. Almost as if sensing his thoughts, the dark-haired boy quietly sat among the rumpled blue sheets on his bed, the mattress wailing at the arrival. Feeling awkward and unsure as to what to do, he returned to his chair and to the impatient math homework. For several minutes, the air in the room remained suspended in a heavy, thick silence. He spared a couple of disinterested glances over his neck at Uchiha, and was unsurprised to find him looking comfortable and completely natural in the quiet, as if it was the melody that had lolled him to sleep every night.

Naruto had never had a chance at silence. Because of the frugal plot of land the foster home resided on, his eyelids often closed to the boisterous lullaby of urgent sirens and angry car-horns. Even now, he could not sleep if there was not some sort of noise carrying on in the background. That was the purpose of the boom box sitting in the corner of his room like an old, faithful friend. If his open window did not tempt enough sound to waft through its threshold, than Naruto would flip the radio on and fall asleep to the gentle music that played on the late-night shows for people just like him; those who were addicted to noise.

"_Well?_" Naruto prompted. He spun around in his chair to face the boy who looked at ease 

"I was waiting on you to initiate conversation." Smirking, he leaned back on his hands. "It's typically what the host does after the guest has been invited into the home." 

"Really?" Naruto stated sardonically as he deposited his elbow unto his knee, resting his head in his palm. "Where did you get that crap? An 18th century guide to etiquette?" 

"A 19th century guide actually." He retorted. 

"Ha, ha, you're hilarious. You must be a hit with all the ladies."

"I wasn't joking at all." 

Naruto twisted around in his chair to face his unfinished homework once more.

"Whatever." He mumbled, reaching into his desk for a fresh pencil. The sharp lead tip hovered expectantly over question three and remained still there for several moments. Just what was the cosine of 45 and how the hell was he supposed to find it? His head scolded himself for doodling stars and cat-faces all over his notebook when he was supposed to be alert and listening to the teacher. Naruto ground his pencil lead into the paper, creating a miniscule mountain of gray dust. 

"Having trouble?" 

In one, glorious second, Naruto jumped ten inches out of his seat and flung his hands into the air. His pencil flew out the window and clinked against the fire escape outside as it fell to ground below. 

"No, I was just contemplating this problem, was all." Naruto seethed through his teeth, refusing to acknowledge the face that had appeared over his shoulder. The faint smell of some foreign spice wafted just beneath his nose. It sort of made him want to sneeze.

"And has your brain conjured up something yet?" The boy's breath trailed lazily across his ear as a hand balanced itself on the surface of the desk. Naruto really didn't support the sudden disregard in his personal space. He couldn't concentrate on anything but Sasuke's long sleeves brushing up against his own. Shikamaru was right—he was stupid…he had let a pervert freely into his bedroom of all places. 

In one swift movement, Naruto slammed his notebook together and put his face into his hands. "It's all just a bunch of bullshit anyway." 

"No it's not." Sasuke affirmed, crossing his arms and towering over him. "It's one of the only tools humans possess to define the world around them." 

Naruto gaped. "That's possibly the gayest thing I've ever heard." 

"Don't blame it for your in-competency." 

Naruto spun around completely to glare at him properly. 

"You know? You're a real dick and I'm about to kick you the hell out of my room if you don't explain some things rather quickly."

Sasuke settled beside the bedraggled covers on his bed and looked up at him expectantly. Why was he so damn comfortable in a foreign place where he had just entered into? Not only that, Sasuke sort of seemed like the 'rod-up-the-old-pucker' type who wouldn't even set foot in a room with a pair of dirty underwear lying innocently in the floor, but here he was, navigating through the colorful puddles of wadded, filthy clothes with startling ease. He also knew about the fire escape placed underneath his window…

…_Seeing as I've been forced to follow you the past two weeks…_

He shivered.

"First off, who are you really?" 

Sasuke cocked his head to the side and smirked. Naruto wrestled the intense urge to rip his dumb lips off his face.

"How about this…I answer a question and then you answer a question. It allows both of us to get to know each other in a fair and balanced manner. Plus, it seems more like an actual conversation then an interrogation." 

Naruto prepared to expel a lengthy list of places where Sasuke could go to when the boy lifted his palm in a halting manner. "Do you really want to continue fighting when you're so eager for answers?" 

He growled, but remained silent. Looking endlessly pleased, Sasuke began. 

"My name is Sasuke Uchiha. I was born in a small, superstitious Japanese village and I enjoy science and hot green tea." Naruto frowned. "Now, it's my turn. How is it that you have the looks of a foreigner but can speak Japanese fluently?" 

Naruto rolled his eyes. It definitely wasn't the first time he'd heard that. "I dunno, lucky I guess. Now what was all that messed up—"

"I don't know is not an answer." Sasuke interrupted, peering at him sternly. Deciding to avoid another needless argument, Naruto replied by sighing. 

"I was adopted, alright? Other than that, I haven't the foggiest. It's my turn." 

"No, it's not alright." Sasuke said suddenly, his back becoming more rigid and straight. Naruto noted that this seemed to be the pose the Uchiha looked most relaxed in. His shoulders carried the guarded position eagerly, as if it was the arrangement they always longed to be in. 

"Are you telling me in all your seventeen—"

"Sixteen," Naruto corrected.

"—Years you've never once asked _anyone_ about where you came from? Are you really that dense?" 

Shifting his focus unto the sock that was on his floor, Naruto bit the inside of his lip. "It's not like I didn't ask. No one knew why. Everybody at the foster home just assumed that my original family was foreign even though my given name wasn't." 

"Why didn't you try an archive at the library or any research of any kind?" Uchiha reproved incredulously.

"Becaaaausseee," He whined as he leaned back in his chair until he was virtually reclining. Glancing up, he found that was fixed with a rather severe stare. He shifted his feet nervously in response. 

"Because," he began more crisply while staring at his thumbs, "by the time I figured out I could actually do something like that, Iruka had adopted me. And when I talked about it to Shikamaru, he told me that it would be betraying Iruka."

"So?" Sasuke prompted. 

"_So,_ It's your turn, bastard. Unlike you, though, I answered my question completely and didn't just say something vague and un-descriptive, like a vague and un-descriptive ass-hole. " Naruto sat forward in his chair abruptly. The legs thumped angrily against the carpet. 

"Why did that thing happen before?"

"Oh," Sasuke rolled his eyes, "how very descriptive and clear." Naruto glowered. 

"Why did I feel so…" He scoured his vocabulary for a proper word. Everything sounded very, very wrong. "…_strange _when you um…"

"Touched you?" Sasuke said un-phased. 

"Yeah," His cheeks felt like two glowing eyes on a stove. "What was all that?" 

Sasuke's black eyes became suddenly distant even though he was gazing directly at Naruto. Slowly, his stare retreated upwards to a brown water stain on the ceiling. 

"That is the calling of the curse." He stated in a dull, listless tone. It was as if his voice was trying to separate itself from the subject all together. Several moments slinked by as Naruto waited patiently for more of an enlightenment than that. Seeing as Sasuke seemed almost like he was disjointed, in a separate place far from his bedroom, Naruto encouraged him. 

"And?" 

"And why do you cuss so much?" Sasuke's stare fell back unto Naruto, who instantly registered that the glint that had been shadowed seconds before returned. 

"What the hell? Where's my explanation?" 

"A question for a question." Sasuke reminded him mockingly. "Balance is what keeps this world in check." 

"That's a load of bull shit." Naruto mumbled. He begun rummaging through his drawer to find another pencil (the failing grade he received on yesterday's math quiz was gnawing at the back of his mind). There was nothing in it but empty gum wrappers and pages to reports that he had never turned in. Whoops. That explained the 54. 

Surprisingly, Naruto decided not to pursue his argument and gave in after slamming the drawer shut and reaching for another. This one concealed several other previous math assignments that had never found their way into his book-bag. Most every problem was blank and answerless, save for #34 which had been completed by messy scrawl that stated 'this sux'. 

"I cuss because I'm good at it."

Sasuke blinked. "That doesn't make any sense." 

Naruto clicked his tongue. His other pencil was across the room, but that meant crossing into Sasuke's territory and he just---didn't want to do that. This drawer was devoid of pencils too. Closing it, he moved on to the last one to his right. "It's just something I've picked up, but I'm not really supposed to." 

"So you do it because you're not allowed?" 

"Iruka hates cussing." Naruto declared absentmindedly as he tossed papers aside to dig deeper into the compartment. This drawer, being the widest and deepest of the others, lodged the science assignments he never even attempted. It was filled to the brim with documents and half-finished essays. Iruka always cleaned his room after it became too chaotic. Whenever he peaked into his desk and into the drawers teeming with half-finished work, he always bitched for several hours, referring to his table as 'the desk of secret failures'. Naruto did not prefer the little nickname. 

"He only cusses when he's _really_ angry." A quick rush of pain seized his gut as he thought back to his feud with Iruka earlier when the kind-hearted man had hollered 'fuck'. The word seemed treacherous and sharp in his mouth, almost like he had been spitting thorns. "And he doesn't like it when I say the 'f' word." 

Ah yes! Beneath the 12 inch thick stack of papers, a single eraser-less pencil lurked. He grabbed it at once and then straightened up. 

"Actually, he doesn't like it when I say the 's' word either…or the 'a' word." Naruto cast a reflective glance at the pencil lying in his palm. "But, the one word I'm absolutely not allowed to say is bastard."

"Why is that?"

The hand around the pencil enclosed. "Because he doesn't want me thinking about things like that. He thinks that if I think about that word long enough, I'll label myself it and become lost like everybody else did." 

"Because you're adopted?"

"Yeah, I guess." Naruto muttered, his hand reaching to re-open his folder when a realization overtook him. 

"Hey! You cheated!" 

"Did I?" Sasuke queried sarcastically as he leaned back on his palms. "I merely kept asking you questions and you kept answering. If you had had a problem with it, you should've said so." 

Suddenly, Naruto felt very weary, as if he'd been awake for several days. "Whatever." He diverted his full, but tired, attention on the exhausting black-haired boy.

"So, what is a 'curse's calling' thing?" 

Sasuke's smirk inched into an irritated frown, as if all his jovial fun was spoiled by the blonde's fatigue. "To explain that idiotically worded question, I have to explain the very nature of a curse to you."

"Sooo, do it." 

A hand raked through his hair idly as he sighed. "It's not that simple. It took me years of studying to fully understand the complexity and depth of a curse's power. You would have to understand the very biochemical makeup of your body and the different simple and complex molecules that make up your DNA. Every proton and neutron, no matter how small, is significant." 

"Whoa, whoa whoa," Naruto exclaimed, flabbergasted. "That's science! Aren't curses like…magic-ish?" 

The starless eyes stared evenly at him. "Magic _is_ a science, don't let anyone tell you otherwise." 

Excitement boiled in his stomach as all pervious traces of sleepiness flaked off him like dry mud. Growing up in such dismal conditions, Naruto had clung frantically to fairy-tales and make-believe stories. Sometimes, at night, he would pretend he was the king's son who had been sent away to live with mortals because of the numerous threats on his life. He would say 'he'll come for me in the morning. He'll come to get me', but when the sun threw its heartless light through the blinds, Naruto was always alone. He had long since relinquished his belief in magic, but just hearing someone identify it in a sentence made the same hope he felt in the twilight hours of his childhood flood through his body once more. 

"You mean like spells and incantations and crap like that?" Naruto questioned eagerly. "That stuff actually exists?"

"Sure." Sasuke said. "Why wouldn't they?" 

"Because…well, there's no evidence. Everything can be explained already and stuff that's magical just goes 'poof' and it's there."

Rolling his eyes and sighing, an infamous partnership that seemed to act perfectly on his face, Sasuke stood up and crossed his arms. 

"I forgot how truly moronic _sleepers_ can be."

"Sleepers?" Naruto interrupted. Was he supposed to know what that meant? 

It was the black-haired boy's turn to look tired and exasperated, as if all his energy drained from his mouth as he talked. Naruto sensed that he was ready to thrive in silence again; to hear the nothing jingle in his ear once more. 

"Sleepers are people like you who have no connection to the hidden villages." Sasuke explained dully. "They live inside the natural laws of physics and do not wish—no, do not need to have it otherwise." 

"What do you mean natural laws?" 

"Na uh, Naruto." Sasuke said. "It's my turn for a question." 

"Are we still playing that?!" Naruto cried, gesticulating angrily. 

"Yes, we are. Who is the man you live with?" 

"Iruka Umino, a 3rd grade teacher on weekdays and a flower-shop attendant on weekends." He said quickly as he sat up taller. "Now, what do you mean by 'inside' the natural laws?" 

"Magic is anything that exists outside the natural laws of your sleeper life." Sasuke said, as he inspected a blob of hardened clay on his bed side table that was supposed to be an ashtray. Iruka had laughed continuously for five hours after Naruto had presented it to him after art class, claiming it looked more like horse crap than something to put cigarette ashes in. But Iruka had displayed it proudly in the living room for months until Naruto learned how to actually make the clay concave. He switched it with a more bowl-like ashtray a year before. 

"And no, it doesn't make things go 'poof' and appear instantly. There is a considerable amount of energy spent, the electrons must be properly rearranged." Sasuke clarified as he placed the hard, brown splotch back unto the table gently. His eyebrows furrowed. "Really, it's hard to define to a sleeper and magic is an incredibly outdated term. Most everything in the hidden villages is in some way enchanted. The people, the animals, the plants, the sculptures, the street, even the pub which sings you Christmas songs when you enter it." 

Naruto's eyes were wide and glittering with amazement. Sasuke glanced over at the him, but quickly looked away, his dark eyebrows knitting closer together. "Everything there can cast magic or has had magic worked upon it." 

A thousand questions tingled on the tip of his tongue, but the blonde remained silent , raring to answer whatever Uchiha queried. He bubbled in his chair. 

"How long have you lived with him?"

"Six and a half years." Naruto uttered rapidly. "How do you cast magic?"

The expression on Sasuke's face was bewildering as he surveyed the room. He looked like he was deeply dismayed as he stared at the two gleaming soccer trophies in the corner and the huge posters that displayed his favorite bands on the walls and the detailed picture of a cat tacked to a bulletin board that Shikamaru had illustrated for him. 

"You're completely normal aren't you?" His voice was muffled into a whisper and it was seemingly absorbed by the globs of dirty clothes on the floor. Naruto gazed at him quizzically. 

"Sorry, what was your question?" Naruto repeated it slowly. " Oh yeah, well most people are just born with the ability to shape and mold bits of _viridis _to their pleasing—"

"Viridis?" 

Sasuke's features attempted a smirk, but he seemed too troubled to complete it properly. "You're asking out of turn. It means green in Latin. It's the supposed life-force that unites us and began the cycle that replicated our DNA for the first time blah-blah, you wouldn't understand any of it even if I watered it down to its bare essentials. Also, parts of it are mysteries in itself. Now may I get back to the original question at hand?" 

Naruto nodded eagerly. Appearing to be at his zenith of sadness, he plopped back unto the bed. He seemed much older with the haughty spark nestled in the corner of his eye extinguished; almost ancient. 

"Well, all you really need to know about any of this, is that there are spells, there are enchantments, there are charms and then… then there are curses. Everything falls under the four categories—everything." 

His eyes looked like smooth, black marbles as they regarded him. Naruto shifted anxiously in his chair as the gaze struck him. Silence drenched the room with a waiting, hungry air, pleading that somebody's voice box would echo a word or two for it to devour. The frown on Sasuke's face deepened until it appeared artlessly gouged by a jagged knife. 

"You and I, Naruto," he declared pensively, "are cursed." 

Naruto couldn't remember whose turn it was to ask a question. Sasuke must've remembered, for he spoke again seconds later.

"Do you love Uminio Iruka?" He requested very, very quietly. His words were almost lost to the sound of a speeding car beneath the window and they sounded very much like they would rather be frolicking outside in the busy, colorful world than inside the bedroom where they were easily scrutinized. But, the room was pleading for some sweet noise to rip its quiet haze away. 

"Of course, why wouldn't I?" The solemn air had converted Naruto's own voice into a soft, hesitant alto. He couldn't exactly remember a time that his larynx restricted his voice and the sentences he tactlessly hurled out. He was normally just so—loud. 

"Because one day you will have to leave him." Sasuke's eyes drifted over to his cow-manure/ashtray sculpture sitting on his bedside table. "And that day will be very soon." 

"Wh-what's that supposed to mean?"

"We're cursed." He reiterated.

"You keep saying that like it's supposed to mean something to me!" Naruto's voice was steadily developing into its shrill pitch again. Sasuke retained eye-contact even though he appeared as though he was reluctant to do so. 

"There is a curse on both of us that ties our very souls together so incredibly tight that our bodies have difficulty distinguishing between them." 

"But, how?" 

Sasuke's gaze discovered the moldy water stain on his ceiling again. "Simply put, someone cursed me a long time ago with an incantation that linked our souls together. Running into you the other day activated it." 

"Me?" Naruto felt like he was on stage with a sweltering spot-light fixed on him. His thumb followed the familiar trail to his mouth and he began to gnaw on the nail. "Why me?" 

Sasuke snorted humorously. "I wonder that too." 

Another quiet moment swallowed the room whole. Naruto felt like someone was trying to squeeze a twelve pound bag of potatoes through his ear. The information just wouldn't process properly because he just couldn't comprehend it—it just seemed like a pile of bad fiction. Sasuke looked as though he took the wordless moments to recuperate. 

"What did you mean by 'I'll have to leave him'? I'm not going to leave Iruka any time soon." 

Sasuke's eyes morphed into the black ice splayed over the roadways in December. They traveled slowly down from the ceiling and landed firmly on the rigid blonde, who squirmed. 

"I can't stay here for too long. My existence has put your's in danger and therefore your loved ones as well. You'll have to come with me." 

"Bullshit!" Naruto howled, his voice rising into strident, ear-splitting decibels. "Why would I go with you?"

The dark eyes narrowed and hardened, the thick ice veiled all emotion. 

"You won't have much of a choice in the matter." 

Instantly, Naruto leapt out of his chair. What the hell was this man saying? That he was going to _kidnap_ him?

"You can't make me do a damn thing. I'll call the police on you and tell them that I'm being stalked by a pervert who plans on kidnapping me and--and you'll be thrown in jail so fast your head will spin." 

Sasuke shook his head calmly. "If it was up to me, I'd leave you here and pretend we never met." His words slightly stung Naruto, almost like the sensation of salt sneaking into a hang nail. Even though he clearly didn't like the dark-haired boy, having anyone annunciate their honest dislike for him made him feel kind of like a social urchin. 

"But, the curse that binds us has other plans." 

"What?" The blonde lost him somewhere. _The curse has plans?_ Since when did inorganic energy/magical-things have a dictated schedule? 

"The curse that is acting upon us right now has a set perimeter that limits our movement from each other. It has restrictions fastening us together permanently mentally and physically." 

"Meaning?" Naruto drawled.

"We're stuck." Sasuke stated simply. "If one of us goes too far from the other, they'll feel unbearable pain, thus crippling them and disallowing any more movement." 

_...Seeing as I've been forced to follow you for the past two weeks…_

Naruto's eyes narrowed distrustfully. "Then how come I haven't spotted you since that time before?"

Uchiha rolled his eyes. "I'm very sneaky and even if I wasn't, I would have never caught your attention—you were always too busy talking to yourself and moaning about something or other." 

"And just how do you know you feel pain if we try and separate?" 

Sasuke's face was as smooth as hard alabaster. 

"I tried to get away." He said. 

Another moment of quiet reflection singed the tops of their heads as a boisterous, drunk couple passed underneath the window. The cogs in Naruto's brain began to clink and turn as he sat completely and utterly still in his chair. _Is this bullshit? _He barely moved or breathed for fear of breaking the fragile, frightened silence hovering like a ghost through his bedroom.

His eyes narrowed. _It's bullshit. It has to be._

A sudden anger ripped through him, and he calmly rose from the chair. 

"You know what I think?" 

Sasuke was silent. 

"I think you're dicking with me." The blonde verified coolly, hoping that he appeared very forceful and domineering with his arms crossed. Sasuke looked un-pleased. 

"I wish I was," he murmured. "But I assure you I'm not." 

"I don't believe you." 

"I don't think it matters whether you believe it or not." Sasuke said flatly. "It still exists and whether you choose to accept it is your own business entirely." 

A flicker of fear flared through him as he felt his confident demeanor shatter all around him. Instinctively, his foot trailed backwards. It all made sense.

"You're insane!" 

"If only I was." Sasuke confirmed lightly. He then looked up to find Naruto's expression truly frightened. "You can't seriously think I'm insane." 

"Get out of my room!" Naruto cried, feeling hopelessly pinned by the desk of secret failures behind him. He didn't much care if Iruka heard him anymore; his voice far exceeded its standard 'in-door' volume. Sasuke seemed to of noticed this too, for his features looked slightly panicked. 

"Or I'll call the cops!" 

Sasuke drew up quickly. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"I'm warning you, if you don't leave now—I'll scream my lungs out."

Sasuke thieved a cautious step forward and the blonde felt his back arch painfully against the hard side of the desk trying to retain the distance. 

"Don't be stupid. I'm not going to hurt you at all." 

"I definitely do not care. Get. Out." 

Sasuke was defiling the space slowly, but surely. Naruto felt like the animal trapped inside his stomach, cornered with no where to run. Sasuke's arm was still extended, as if he was trying to calm a bucking horse.

"What did I do to scare you?"

"Well, for one, you keep putting me into very _very_ awkward situations."

"Like what?"

"You kissed me!"

"No, that is how the curse awakens. So, technically, we didn't curse, our bodies did."

"You stalked me!"

"Unwillingly." 

"You were hanging out in a crack-house!"

"So were you."

The distance between the two could now be measured in inches. Naruto's quick breath glided uncertainly off his hot lips. The extended hand reached forward in an attempt to invoke something—anything that would calm his frantic conduct. He grimaced. The last thing he needed to feel was that blinding, hazy-hot delirium ransack his organized mind. He needed control in this situation—precise control. 

"DON'T TOUCH ME!"

"Naruto!" A worried voice called through the door, but the two bodies inside we're too preoccupied to hear it. In just one, fleeting second, Sasuke had moved as if graced with blinding speed, and had successfully pinned Naruto to the desk, a hand planted tightly against his lips. The blonde barely had time to register just what was going on as his face was suddenly crushed by the top of his table and strapping fingers strangled his jaw. The warm, fuzzy fever began to seep off the pale boy's relatively cool hand and Naruto was once again gripped by the phantasmagoria. 

((finally, I've snuck that word in somewhere. Horah.))

"Naruto!" A heavy knock rattled the door. Naruto struggled but Sasuke's grip was inhumanly strong. "What's wrong? Is there somebody in there with you?"

_Come in, Iruka!_ He thought frantically, his muddled mind becoming more muddy and murky with every passing moment. _Use the key! He's going to kidnap me and take me away from you! _

"Naruto!" Another set of loud rapping. "Answer me!"

Naruto felt like his brain was crumbling away to bits about him, his logic and his ability to think and understand situations was gently fluttering to the ground. He had to think—how do you keep yourself from being kidnapped by scary perverts? 

He remembered, as if in a past life, fragments of a memory where he and Shikamaru had been sitting at school discussing what to do if someone tried to mug him. Being hopelessly clumsy, Shikamaru had warned him that fighting with fists would only end badly for him—he was supposed to do something else.

_Iruka please open the door!_ He silently pleaded as his body began to respond to the delirium as well. His knees felt feeble and close to buckling and his head felt too heavy to lift anymore. What the hell was happening to him? What was going on?

All his thoughts didn't follow a rational pattern anymore—what was he supposed to do in this situation? 

"Fine, Naruto." A quiet voice murmured behind the door. "I understand."

_No! Iruka! _His brain was bubbling over, his limbs were beginning to feel like heated putty, and his thighs were shaking with his weight. He was steadily losing control of his mind; it seemed like it was drifting off into a dark, unlabeled sea.

_Goddamn-mother-fucking- cow balls…_ His mind sighed, defeated. _Wait…balls! _

The word sang gloriously through his head as he remembered just what Shikamaru had advised him to do.

Concentrating all his remaining strength to his legs, Naruto delivered a swift, hard kick to a said kidnapper's balls, and wobbling slightly, leapt up onto the desk and gracelessly climbed out the window. He navigated clumsily down the fire escape and the wobbly, rusty ladder. Faintly, he heard someone shout his name, but he didn't even turn his head. 

His feet carried him forward at a hasty speed as he passed the entrance to the apartment building, than the dark, musty mouth of the alley where he dumped the trash on Tuesdays, then the intersection with the shattered street light and then—

Suddenly, he crumpled to the sidewalk. A powerful, horrible pain fired through every artery, vein, capillary, nerve—any place where his blood dwelled burned and bubbled. His belly began to twist and churn, his very guts felt like they were strangling his vital organs. Every joint in his body seemed drenched in sand, so that every convulsion grinded into his bones and ligaments, seemingly wrenching them apart and then shredding them to indistinguishable bits. His skin was blazing, every pore spouting fire, but he could not get warm. Shivers racked his body and a frigid sweat leaked down the side of his neck. He could not even hug himself for warmth; every movement tossed his brain into spasms of unbearable pain. His temperature had to be well below zero, but his skin was so hot! It seemed where the heat and the cold intertwined, another pain was established, this one much like dipping ones hand into broiling water and then hurriedly plunging it into ice. Naruto gasped for air, but his lungs could not retain any oxygen. Every breath rattled and growled in his chest and no relief was to be had. Was it even his breath? It didn't feel like it.

And at bottom of it all, there was an undeniable fear that this was death—that Naruto Uzumaki, the short, blonde haired flunkie, was about to die and leave everyone he loved behind. His heart beat irregularly as the fear consumed his chest. _N-no, please god, no!_

"It's the most horrible pain that can be realized." A composed voice abruptly soothed over Naruto's chaos and there was a slight reprieve in the intensity of pain. 

"Please…" Naruto mumbled, his lips like swollen, burning pipes, sputtering disgusting cargo. "…Please…Help…Come…Please…" 

"The only thing that can cure it is my touch." Every syllable seemed to gently wipe the searing pain in his abdomen away. It returned with a dastardly force in the quiet between words.

"Help..." He had no idea where the breath was coming from, how his brain wasn't starving and frittering away into trash. 

"When I mentioned we we're cursed earlier, you said 'you keep saying that like it's supposed to mean something to me.'" That rumbling voice, he recognized it vaguely as Sasuke's, but any other thought pertaining to the boy was lost to the severe hurting.

"It means we're bonded, or rather, stuck together, Naruto." The voice flittered softly into the quaking blonde's ear. It was closer, Sasuke was closer—and the pain was lessening, but the chills would not subside. 

"It means wherever I go, you have to follow, likewise for me as well."

A tepid hand suddenly rested against his cheek and instantly the tremendous pain evaporated, leaving behind only a dull, throbbing ache and a terrible, empty coldness. 

"That's the nature of a curse."

He was vaguely aware he was picked up and slung tenderly over a shoulder. The pain and panic had left his mind in jumbled leaflets that contained no words that made any sense. He was vaguely aware that he was being carried back down the street; the rhythm of the stride gutted his brain and created an even harsher pounding. He was vaguely aware the person holding him tightly climbed a ladder, almost effortlessly with the added weight and then softly laid him down on a bed. But, when the warm hands left his fevered body, a reminiscent pain soared through his stomach and Naruto's eyes opened abruptly. 

"Please!" He cried frantically, wincing as he seized the soothing hand that had left his burning limbs. "Don't leave me!" It stung to speak, stung to move or breathe. Naruto's eyes slammed shut.

Sasuke stood over him. His frown deepened as he sighed and reclined next to the shuddering boy, who immediately latched unto him around the waist and slammed his sweaty, florid face against the cool fabric of his shirt. Tentatively, Sasuke's arms enclosed around him. 

"It's cold," the fever-induced boy mumbled, tears hugging the corners of his eyes. His grip became tighter around Sasuke's waist. "It's so cold…"

"I know." Sasuke declared softly, his fingers hesitantly crawling through Naruto's untidy locks. 

* * *

The sun threw its heartless light through the blinds that morning as Naruto crawled out of bed gingerly. Every muscle felt tight and over-used, as if he had run a 15 mile marathon the night before. His vision was blurry and the world appeared unreal, like he was looking through a stale, foggy glass. He was still cold and was tempted to throw his comforter over his shoulders had he been able to bend without feeling a tremor spin up and down his spine. The bed was bedraggled and empty. Sasuke had left, but not truly gone anywhere. He was around, he had to be. Just--- lurking out of sight. 

Naruto unlocked his door and hobbled into the kitchen/living area where he found Iruka staring vacantly at a steaming black cup of coffee at the dinner table. His guardian raised his head at his soft footsteps bounded off the frugal linoleum . Naruto felt a flare of sadness as he gazed into the bloodshot eyes that were laced with pink, puffy skin. 

"Oh, Naruto," Iruka sobbed quietly, his hands reaching around his surrogate child's waist and pulling him in close. His tears produced wet streaks on Naruto's t-shirt and he felt ever colder than before. He returned the embrace.

"I'm sorry," his guardian bawled, "so, so sorry." 

Naruto gently rest his hand into Iruka's tussled hair. "It's okay."

The sun hurled another lifeless ray through a crinkled blind and it caught the glossy surface of Naruto's new, concave ashtray, which gleamed mockingly on the coffee table. It's brown, lumpy body winked at him. 

"It's going to be okay."

* * *

**The-end-of-the-22-page-crap-authors-note: **

You're all such lovely, wonderful people! 


	4. A person of pride and character

**The Curse of the Red Vine Lovers**

**Chapter four: A person of pride and character **

**The Author's note to end author's notes: **I'm a graduate of high-school. I am now an adult and with my first adulty decree, I hereby declare all writings of Sasunaru to be read and over-analyzed in all public educational facilities. I have spoken.

Eee! I think this one is going to be a bit shorter than the other one—just cause there isn't a bunch of talking. Or wait, I dunno. Damn—this could be really freaking long. Ooh geezzz, I hope I turn this out within the month (or year would be nice). I don't know about the writing either—it could really suckle. (it's summer and I'm full of hackneyed phrases ready to be spilled) 

Psss: My hair is purple and blue! (ick) I look like rotten cotton candy and my parents are about as happy as parents who have a Technicolor-haired child can be. Which means they're not. They're pissed. Ready to slash my face to bloody bits. 

Pssssss: A lot of you have been asking about the excerpts that begin the chapters and I'm sorry to say that I've made it alllllll up. There is no _Rumsfield's extensive guide to most every curse_…But gah, if there was, we'd all be damned. Imagine if your enemies could turn you into a pile of sticks…that would really not be good. Let me tell you, I would have already been used for firewood by now. The world would be just one big stick pile and one kitten. My cat is immune to curses—they're too feeble to convert her to measly wood. She is the breathing entity of evil. I wuv her! . 

As for the letter last chapter, I hope none of you found it crappily cliché. I can't talk/write/be/dress like a person from the 1800s. I read Dracula and they say dearest too much. 

(Reviewing is lurvly! I'm trying to reply to people now. I was scared before that if I replied to your review, I would bother/annoy you. But horah! I have been drenched in confidence(and icecream). Just tell me if you would rather me not reply.) 

Yay! Love! Review!

* * *

_Excerpt from __**The World is Far More Complicated than I Understand **__by Imus Thames. Chapter 12, page 389. _

"_...It is really like a river, I was told by an African Shaman in the last year while I was studying abroad. He promptly corrected me every time I accidentally called it 'Viridis'. According to him and his people, the word 'green' does not even begin to expand upon the vast inter-workings of this prevailing force. He does not believe it should carry a name. I of course contested in my ignorance that human's must strive to label and organize their world to better preserve themselves, and by defining this unstoppable wind as Viridis, we are one stop closer towards discerning just what it is. For, when you define something, you define what it is not. _

_This is where he stopped me and asked if he could tell me a story. A little confused, I agreed he could. _

_He told me this:_

_Once there were two great hunters from two great villages that lay side by side. These two were very good friends and often hunted together in the un-chartered lands to the east. One day, the two set out to hunt, but as they passed a bush by a river, a soft growling stopped them. The two hunters laughed at what a pitiful creature could be creating such a small, weak noise. Both pointed and sneered at the small, red tail that poked out from the leaves. _

"_It's a fox that thinks it's a lion," they laughed. Suddenly, a monstrously huge creature emerged from beneath the bush. The small red tail they had mocked had actually been its finger. The monster gobbled them whole. _

_

* * *

_

"Yo."

"What the hell are you doing here?!"

Sasuke, Naruto had begrudgingly learned, possessed the unique and highly irritating ability to pop up at any given place at any given moment (and frighten the living crap out of him). It had been a slow, but tightly strung week since he had first felt that nameless pain rip through him and author a phobia of a certain black-haired boy. Sasuke seemed to have noted and promptly ignored Naruto's panicky glances and nervous fidgets by jumping into his life this past week at random intervals. It was almost as if he was warning him he was always there. Friday night, he had appeared at his bedroom window, leering like a satisfied cat. Saturday morning, he accompanied him on his walk to school. Sunday afternoon, Naruto was forced to fabricate an extravagant story to explain his sudden appearance to Iruka in the grocery store. 

Typically, he matched his stride whenever Naruto was alone, strolling alongside him as if his presence was purely natural. There was never much conversation between the two. Sasuke would ask him pleasant, detached questions such as: 'how was your day?' 'Where are you going?' 'Do you have a test tomorrow?' His rebellious demeanor snuffed out by his fright, Naruto would open and close his mouth uselessly until finally words hobbled out. Naruto never felt so unconfident in his words. He was so afraid that he would voice the wrong thing in front of him and suddenly, he'd be submerged into that mind-numbing pain again. 

---Today, however, all thoughts of pain were eradicated as he stared incredulously at the pale boy leaning nonchalantly against the gate. Noticing the excited squeal from a pack of girls behind him, Naruto rushed forward and scowled at Uchiha. 

"I came to walk you home." He confirmed. "Is there something wrong with that?"

"Yeah! There is!" His face felt warmer as the throng of girls behind him openly pointed and giggled. "You don't have to appear in front of everybody I know!"

"Hey Naruto-kun!" A tinkling, sweet voice called from behind him and immediately, Naruto's heart rate quickened. He turned around to face Sakura Haruno, the prettiest (in his opinion anyway) girl in his class. 

All his wit (ha) and charm (ha) turned to indistinguishable mush whenever she stood anywhere close to him. She was the pampered daughter of a Japanese diplomat and a Scottish artist, and her looks portrayed the mix with thoughtful grace. Her eyes were pale, green and rimmed with dark eyelashes while her light strawberry-red hair glimmered pink in the sun. What attracted Naruto to Sakura out of the all the other girls in his school, was her kindness. She always asked him about his day, how he was doing and while she did so her lips would compose a soft, bright smile that affirmed she actually cared about the words tossed out; it wasn't just another reason to flaunt her perfect white teeth. 

"S-Sakura," Naruto stammered, feeling his entire face kindle with heat as she bestowed him with a gentle smile. He returned it with a goofy grin. 

"How do you think you did on that math quiz?"

Naruto's mouth muscles twitched with the effort to remain locked in place. Well, he answered most of the questions with wicked-looking smiley faces. "Pretty good-- it wasn't that hard. How 'bout for you?" 

"I don't think I got number 37 right." Her eyes darted to Sasuke. They seemed to glow momentarily. "I'm sorry I'm so rude Naruto—I barely noticed your friend."

"He's not a friend!" The blonde cried, bristling as he stole a glance back at the smirk slowly blooming on Sasuke's face. _Bastard._ "I mean—He's not really um—he's Sasuke." 

Sakura's lips conducted that illuminating smile once more and his heart melted to his knees. It wasn't directed his way. 

"I'm Sakura. It's nice to meet you, Sasuke-san." 

A torrent of jealousy propelled him to seize Sasuke's wrist, ignoring the tepid flow that rolled off his skin, and drag the irritating woman-stealer away. He spared Sakura a rushed explanation. 

"Sorry! We're late to—baseball practice, ja!" 

Sakura watched as the two boys hobbled away, bickering loudly. Her pale, lime eyes suddenly dampened into a darker, emptier hue. They were vacant. 

"I didn't know you played baseball."

When they were at least a safe mile away, Naruto finally released his white-knuckled grip on Sasuke's wrist. Immediately, he was rubbing the red blotch with his long fingers. 

"What were you doing at the school! There's no reason for you to be there!" 

"You're jealous." Sasuke grinned knowingly. "You like Sakura." 

"No she's just pretty, kind, and an all around good person." Naruto stated, walking into the wide alley between two high, ritzy apartment buildings beside him. Many of the kids that went to his school lived close and the last thing he needed them to see was him interacting with Sasuke; most of his communications with the boy did not go exactly 'well'. 

"If you like her," Sasuke followed him into the alley and reclined languidly against the wall as if he owned it, "than why did you lie to her?"

Eyes widening slightly, Naruto found himself feeling abruptly sick…how did he?

"You failed that math quiz." The blonde squirmed uncomfortably and glanced down at his feet resting tensely against the pavement. They looked like caged animals inside his worn sneakers. "I watched you—you hardly finished any of it." 

The fact that Sasuke had just casually admitted to ogling him for the past several hours made him feel violated and used; as if his skin was transparent and anyone could see anything they pleased. Naruto sat down and leaned his head on the building's side, his hair catching and pulling in the rough crooks in the concrete. 

"I wish you'd quit that," mumbled the blonde as he closed his eyes. This was the lighter side of town; the part of the city where the street lamps flickered on at 8 a' clock sharp and turned the pristine neighborhood into a glowing, orange jewel that was too large to steal. Trash was placed in the proper reciprocals and the only people you had to worry about were the preoccupied joggers tugging a mean, spoiled dog around on a leash. The buildings here were constructed with even concrete and lofty roofs that almost grazed the clouds. Three miles to the left, though, the world became darker and filthier. Most of the street lamps had been shattered by rowdy teenagers, leaving behind empty, disenchanted glass shells. Dirt and mold blossomed across the squat, brick buildings and barren store fronts with cracked and splintered windows were not uncommon. The people were bred darker, meaner, with more muscle mass. They stalked on the littered sidewalks like dictators. The air smelled cleaner here…and Naruto could close his eyes. 

"It's not as if I want to, in fact usually, I don't." 

"What else do you do while I'm at school?" Naruto questioned, but really he was yearning to ask what else _he could do_. 

"Typically," Sasuke slid down the opposite wall so that his eyes could find proper contact, "I go to the library and research."

"What?" Naruto's eyes popped open as he stared dubiously at his companion. "But when I went far from you I—"

"It's all about intentions." The Uchiha's pupils seemed to glaze over with the same ice that overtook them every time the curse was mentioned. The cinnamon petals that bloomed around the black hole seemed to wilt and die. "You wanted to run away from me, something forbidden by the curse, so it took action. It stopped you.

_Stopped me…_The words rang coldly through his brain as he shivered with the ghost of the pain. 

"However, I go to the library and research, knowing full well that I will return to you. The curse slackens its proximity."

Naruto snorted humorlessly. "This all sounds like absolute bullshit, you know that?"

"Yes," Sasuke sighed, "I know." 

A quiet passed as a crowd of students from his high-school walked by the mouth of the alley, giggling and chatting as if the world would always rotate slowly and surely. Naruto watched them longingly, a pang of loneliness crossing his chest. He felt so isolated—with only this boy for company …And Shikamaru still hadn't come back to school since he had betrayed him. 

_Maybe he thinks I'm mad at him…_

Naruto needed his lazy friend now more than ever. Without Shikamaru's presence, he felt like a hapless seed that had fallen into a gushing river. Normally, Shikamaru would nag him endlessly until he attempted his homework and would always come over to his apartment when a test was scheduled for the next day. Naruto had always teetered over the low 'B' high 'C' line but without Shikamaru, the only grades he had seen lately were not even remotely close to a 'D'. 

"Oh crap," Naruto suddenly remembered, banging his head slightly against the wall. "I have a science test tomorrow." 

"You should study for it. I don't think your grade point average can take another failing grade." 

"Shut up," he snapped, as he sat up straighter and begun to ravage through his bag. "I hope I brought the study sheet ho—shit, I didn't." 

"What are you covering?" Sasuke asked. Naruto began to rip multitudes of crumpled paper out of his bag. 

"I have no idea." Turning the bag completely over, he let the papers spill to the ground. "Cellular perspiration or something like that."

"Cellular respiration?" 

"That's it," Naruto answered absently, as he clawed through the mountain of papers at a frenzied pace, stray pencils and barren candy wrappers rolling frantically out of the way. "Damn it all, it's really not here. Shit, I'm going to fail!"

"Not necessarily." Sasuke stood up, idly brushing the dust off his butt. He walked forward and extended his hand, grinning down at the suddenly wide-eyed boy. Naruto's eyes danced from the appendage to the seemingly genuine smile skeptically. 

"I can help you study." The black-haired boy declared. Naruto stared pointedly at the hand. A quiet moment of redundant gazing passed. Sasuke's smile twitched; his mouth appearing as if it desperately yearned to be back in its standard frown again. 

"This is where you grab my hand and we skip off into the sunset to study for your test, dobe." 

Naruto's eyes narrowed and Uchiha's mouth slipped back into its comfortable, stern line again. "Why are you being nice?"

"I'm always nice."

The blonde shook his head. "No you're not. You're a dick. Why are you being nice?" 

Pallid hands retreated into black pants pockets and Sasuke slowly turned away from him. 

"To be completely honest, my research has reached sort of a dead end." He peered at him over his shoulder. One dark eye mustered a vast intensity that drew enough stifling silence for two. Naruto felt his knees bend and his legs straighten on their own accord. He stood up.

"I think we might be locked like this forever."

Naruto felt like a knot of wiggling worms spasmed in his stomach. "You mean—"

"Now," Sasuke cut across him curtly, "would you like to know the finer points of glycolysis or are you just going to sit idly by and watch your grades drop?" He strode away purposefully. Naruto ambled inelegantly behind him.

"What's glycolysis?" He asked as he followed his stalker to his apartment, watching the pristine, beautiful cement world fold to the filthy brick streets to the left. 

"You're hopeless."

And after four hours of dutiful studying, Naruto was beginning to believe it. Sasuke almost seemed to be speaking in a foreign tongue for every time he opened his mouth, indiscernible terms and explanations crawled out. He couldn't even consult the dictionary because he was pretty sure he couldn't even _begin_ to spell some of the crap Sasuke was babbling on about. His science book was propped open on his desk to page 209 where diagrams with funny, hard-to-pronounce words pranced about haughtily. Sasuke had pulled in a chair from the kitchen and sat close beside him without a second thought. However, the blonde felt overly aware of the space between them and found it slightly hard to concentrate on any fermentation nonsense with that foreign spice wafting beneath his nose. 

During Sasuke's fifth simplified speech on ATP and the electron transport chain, Iruka opened the door and peaked inside. 

"Wait, wait, wait—ATP was converted to oxygen in the transport train?" 

"No," Sasuke's voice portrayed his exasperation and weariness. His black eyes flashed with irritation. "NADH and FADH2 are converted to ATP when—""

"Hold up! On the transport train?" 

Sasuke sighed. "On the electron transport _chain_." 

A pencil found its way into Naruto's mouth and he nervously gnawed on it. "And this is the um, Crab's cycle right?" 

"Kreb's." He corrected coldly. 

"Right, right." Naruto grinned sheepishly. 

"Hello boys," Iruka called out, coming into the room, balancing two glasses of soft drinks on a plate. 

"Iruka!" Naruto cried, hurriedly closing his text book as if it displayed his secret connection to the boy sitting innocently beside him. "When did you get home?" 

"Just about an hour ago. I didn't want to disturb you." He smiled kindly, and Naruto's stomach dropped when he saw him glance over at Sasuke's emotionless face. "I thought you could use a break. Especially you, um—you're the boy from the grocery store, right?"

This was most certainly not a situation Naruto was thrilled about. His presence felt so different in the chair next to him (usually it was Shikamaru rubbing his temple while muttering 'bothersome' in that spot). It was so strange that his mouth could not even rally up a proper lie to explain the sudden appearance of this boy in his life. Instead, it simply hung there like an open man-hole. 

"I'm Uchiha Sasuke, sir." Sasuke's face was smooth and flawless. "I go to school with Naruto-kun."

"Do you now?" Iruka set the drinks down on the desk and smiled at Sasuke once again. "Well, I want to thank you. I know how stubborn and hard-headed and just plain aggravating Naruto is sometimes—"

"—Always bragging about me—"Naruto interjected, putting his head into his hands. 

"—but he's really not as stupid as he comes across. In fact, I've found he's perfectly capable of doing science, he just gets bullied into thinking he can't." Iruka frowned, cradling the plate to his chest. His focus immediately shifted onto Naruto. "He hasn't said anything mean to you lately, has he?" 

"No, Iruka," The blonde sighed, rolling his eyes and burying his face further into his hands as if to escape the situation entirely. He didn't really know what he was so embarrassed about—he wasn't ashamed of Iruka or even Sasuke, but there was something about their meeting that felt as if it shouldn't occur. 

_You'll have to come with me…_ Naruto had never felt so isolated in his life, like a prisoner in his own skin. _My existence has put yours in danger and therefore your loved ones as well…_

Naruto looked up from his palms and glanced between the only two people currently active in his life. Iruka was enlightening Sasuke on all the dastardly science teachers that had bullied him into failing grades in the past while he nodded pleasantly. 

_You'll have to come with me…_

"Then, there was this one jerk last year who just wouldn't leave Naruto alone." Iruka explained, "the man mocked his failing grades! Whenever he graded a test, he would tack the highest and lowest grades to the wall, and every time Naruto ended up on that wall. Sometimes, he didn't even earn the lowest grade and he'd _still _end up on it. " The older man's tanned cheeks had collected an angry flush. "What did he call it again, Naruto?" 

"The wall of fame and shame." He muttered quietly, tinkering inattentively with the pencil in his hands. 

"What an idiotic name." Sasuke said sincerely, leaning back into his chair. Naruto noted he looked less rigid than before—Iruka had that effect on people; he was an incredible host who could make even a sultan feel at home in a pigsty. 

"Isn't it? Well, I went to the principal and of course got written off." Iruka's soft brown eyes dulled as they trailed from Sasuke to a rubber-band ball on the desk. "They say he's a trouble-maker who needs to be reprimanded like this. They say it will make him a better person in later life—a person of pride and character." He snorted and returned his attention to the quiet boy in front of him. His eyes gleamed proudly. "But he already has more character than the entire faculty and student body put together and as for pride? It's never done anybody any good—it only breeds more hatred and separation from others." 

"How enlightening, Buddha. You should write that one down. " Naruto said tonelessly. Iruka smacked him hard on the back of his head. 

"Thank you, I'll be sure to do that." Iruka sighed. "But that man is nothing compared to this year's biology teacher! He is truly a horrible, horrible man."

Sasuke seemed politely interested. "How so?"

"Other than failing Naruto for _no good reason,_ he humiliates him in class by openly calling him an idiot and then after he pointlessly fails him—oh, what did he say again, after you told him how hard you worked?"

Naruto adopted an unnaturally slick, wispy voice and he spread his lips wide across his face until he appeared to be leering insultingly. "'Tell me, how does it feel to know that hard work and sacrifice do not have to be repaid in the end? That everything you believed was false? Does it hurt? _Does it burn?_ GAH!" Slamming his fist onto the desk, the rubber-band ball quivered and rolled off the side. His face and voice resumed its normality. "He's such a dick!"

Another slap was delivered to the back of his head and Naruto glared upwards. "Oh come on, you know it's true."

"Yes," the guardian agreed, "but that is not a nice word. Use jerk or terrible person or even meanie—"

"Meanie would be appropriate if I was eight like your students, but seeing as I'm only two months away from turning 17, dick is pretty much conducive to my age." 

"What am I going to do with you, Naruto?" Iruka sighed, walking to the door. "Ah, well, I'll leave you two to your studying." 

Naruto was glad for the jovial intermission in his diligent studying and his brain felt looser and more relaxed than it had several minutes ago. He smiled; Iruka had that affect on people. Focusing his attention back on Sasuke and his closed science book, he expected to find his study partner in the same restful mind set as he was. But, what he discovered was that Sasuke looked tenser than he had ever seen him. His back was stiff and his shoulders were clenched; his eyes were narrowed in concentration. 

"Naruto," His voice settled into a deeper, more tightly wound resonance. "Tell me more about this teacher."

"Why?" 

"Just tell me." He commanded. Naruto was momentarily speechless, stricken with the same un-confidence in his words as he had experienced earlier.

"Well, he's tall, sort of hunched, and he's pale—like sickly pale! He's the whitest person I've ever seen. Like a piece of paper or something." He spouted nervously, wiping his dry lips with his tongue. "And he has long black hair—Long as a girl's! No man in his right mind should have hair that long unless they want to be called 'fruity'. And his eyes—"

"His name, Naruto," Sasuke growled demandingly. "What is his name?" 

"O-Orochimaru-sensei." He frowned at Sasuke's widened eyes. Astonishment graced the edges of the cinnamon petals sprouting from the. Naruto was utterly surprised to see the crack in his smug façade and the slight fear that was sputtering through. "I don't really remember his first name. It was on the sheet we got for—"

"I have to go." Sasuke declared at once, climbing unto his desk and unlatching the window hastily. A couple of pencils rolled to the floor as he began to clamber out of the frame. Suddenly, before he could even think, Naruto grabbed the loose fabric of his jeans as his leg was about to swing through the threshold. He looked up at him expectantly, feeling slightly hurt at his abrupt exit. 

"I'll be back," Sasuke smirked knowingly. Naruto's grip loosened. His stomach twisted uneasily. "I promise." 

And with that, he leapt from the window and unto the fire-escape which clanked loudly in reply. He climbed gracefully down the ladder and then melted into the dark streets and their flickering, orange lights. 

Did he want him to come back?

_Hell no, _he thought forcefully, returning to his chair and the science that lay impatiently in front of him. Opening his textbook to page 209, diagrams with funny words galloped about, mocking him with their unpronounceable letters. 

_Asshole. _

* * *

Naruto could not remember a time he had actually enjoyed the mundane stretches in his life, but here he was, practically giddy with the normalcy the day had thus far provided. Yesterday and the day before that had gone perfectly typical. He had woken up at seven and swiped his alarm clock to the floor. After groggily smashing into the threshold of the bathroom, he had proceeded through all toiletries, gussied up in the mirror, and had thrown on the closest shirt that did not smell strange. From there, he stumbled into his uniform pants and jacket and then into the kitchen where he bickered briefly with Iruka about the burnt state of his toast. At seven thirty, he sprinted out the door and to school. And leaning nonchalantly against the gate was his long lost companion. 

"Shikamaru!" Naruto had cried gleefully, tackling his slightly stunned friend. "Where have you been?" 

"I had the flu." He had answered lightly, patting him on the head. Naruto noticed his movements were tense and guarded and his eyes kept darting from student to student as if waiting for one of them to unexpectedly hurl a knife his way. Shikamaru pulled away and peered concernedly at him. "Have you been alright?"

"No. It's been hell." Naruto had smiled cheerfully. "Utter. Hell."

From their reunion, the day had progressed with startling boredom. Naruto even secretly believed he didn't absolutely bomb his science test. Not an A by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely somewhere in the passing vicinity. 

The best part of it all was that the two days had been Sasuke-less. Not one sudden appearance of the black-haired boy had occurred. Naruto had been lolled to sleep both those nights by the gentle music of his boom-box and the angry horns and sirens of a part of town that never let its guard down. For a moment, his dreams had been delayed by a panicked thought that maybe Sasuke was never coming back… Maybe the name of his baneful science teacher had finally frightened him away (it was enough to scare Naruto into submission). But, by turning up the volume on his radio, all thoughts of perverted stalkers had dissipated like whispers in a crowd. 

And here he was today, lounging in his desk during homeroom, feeling slightly confused and all around mixed about Sasuke's abrupt absence. He couldn't stop fidgeting; his hand had latched unto a pencil and he was tapping it absently against his desk. Where was Sasuke? It made him feel guilty to admit that _maybe_ he had enjoyed having the favorable attention of someone other than Shikamaru and Iruka just a tiny bit. Sure, he didn't understand all this curse gibberish and he still had difficulty believing it, but it was sort of a nice sentiment knowing that there were more than two people in the world who took the time to notice him (and being noticed was _very_ important to him). That didn't mean he wholeheartedly accepted him as a friend or a confidant, no, it just meant he acknowledged himself as a lonely boy. 

A flicker of anger sailed through him. _The bastard took advantage of it too… _

Attempting to transmit his thoughts into more productive endeavors, he turned around to address Shikamaru, who was already starting the day brilliantly by staring dreamily out of the window. 

"Ne, Shikamaru, do you think that if I made a B on that test, that I could possibly pass the class?"

His lone companion regarded him lazily. "I don't think there's a chance in he…" 

Naruto cocked his head to the side as he watched Shikamaru's lethargic brown eyes suddenly sharpen to alertness. He had only once seen him alarmed before and that was when he had mindlessly wondered in front of an oncoming bus. Nothing startled this boy, it was as if he had seen it all before. Naruto turned around to see just what had enough caliber to widen his friends eye's and suddenly—his insides felt dunked in ice water. 

"Class, even though it's out of season and highly rare we get transfer students so late in year," the mousy homeroom teacher announced, "I want you all to be nice to…" She pushed her plastic glasses farther up the bridge of her nose as she squinted to read the name written on the paper she was holding. "…Sasuke Uchiha."

Was he breathing? He wasn't exactly sure. His chest was slowly expanding up and down, but he felt so unbelievably disjointed he wasn't sure what bodily functions were happening. His blood seemed to have converted into ice like a creek in the middle of winter, turning his limbs into useless, stiff slabs of meat. 

"He's here…" He whispered quietly. The pencil that he had been previously tapping dropped to the floor. 

"Of all places…" Shikamaru muttered behind him, but the words hardly crawled into Naruto's brain; it was too preoccupied with the abrupt appearance of the black-haired boy decked completely in the same school attire the class was wearing. 

"Please treat me with kindness everyone…" Sasuke bowed, his ebony hair rocking forward and veiling his sarcastic eyes. 

"There seems to be an open desk near Haruno-san if you'd like to take a seat." 

_Haruno-san…_Who was that again? His drugged brain could not grasp the information. _Sakura-chan_! _She sits somewhere behind me…_All his muddy mind could comprehend, was that Sasuke was sauntering languidly down the ally he sat in. As the boy passed by, his arm brushed by his shoulder and the mind-tingling heat transiently swarmed his body. Panicked that somehow everyone would see him melt and submit, he glanced upwards only to momentarily lock gazes with two glinting black eyes. 

The shared moment lasted only a second. It was ephemeral. No eye could perceive the split- second when a boundary was broken and swept away. No one noticed at all. 

Sasuke gracefully sat down in a seat two desks behind him. 

No one noticed that today was the only day Naruto Uzumaki did no tap his pencil idly against his desk. No one noticed the stiff, rigid muscles in his shoulder blades that never once loosened from their tight mold. No one noticed that he kept perfectly, frighteningly still all through their first four classes. 

…And only one person noticed that the new transfer student's eyes rested naturally on Naruto all four classes without sparing the classroom, his text-books, or the even the teacher so much as a glance. Sakura Haruno regarded him with vacant eyes. 

* * *

After Shikamaru had asked to go to the infirmary claiming he still had a touch of the flu, the frazzled trance on the blonde's brain shattered, and Naruto was left utterly pissed. 

Naruto had been since lunch-time trying to corner Sasuke during the class changes. The boy had remained mostly impassive to his heated stares and the sporadic arsenal of wadded papers hurled at him; they bounced uselessly against his head. Occasionally, he would gaze his way and stare blankly at him, but when Naruto attempted to actually converse with him, he would slink away suddenly and disappear. 

_Why is he here?!_ His mind rewound the thought many times as he clutched the sides of his desk until his fingers turned white. He had employed a battery of techniques to divert Sasuke's attention his way, everything short of howling his name and waving frantically like a mad man. 

Finally, in Orochimaru-sensei's class, he had the chance to slip Sasuke a note. Being a methodical and calculated man, Orochimaru could not tolerate anything out of order. For this reason, every student was aligned alphabetically in his class. As it happened, Naruto occupied the last seat. He was forced to scoot back a chair so that the meticulous man could allow UCHIHA to occur before UZUMAKI. Sasuke plopped down in front of him and promptly ignored his annoyed whispers and 'pssssst's. 

As inconspicuously as possible, Naruto reached into his bag, pulled out a scratch sheet of paper, and began to scribble out a short, heated note. 

_Teme!_

_What the hell are u doing here? how did u even get into the school? u got to have papers and shit. Why would u come here? _

Hurriedly, he crumpled the paper into a ball as silently as he could and tossed it over the black-haired boy's shoulder where it bounced and landed in the middle of his desk. Sasuke remained unresponsive. Growling, Naruto kicked the back of his seat, hard enough to jolt him forward. 

Slowly, his long, white fingers un-wrapped the blob, smoothed out the paper, and read. Seconds later, he jotted something down beneath his own writing. He then folded it neatly back together and threw it lazily over his shoulder.

Naruto hastily unfolded it and glowered. Sasuke had corrected all his grammar. 

_Dobe, you should pay attention; it would do your grade some good. We'll chat after class. _

Preoccupying himself with ripping the crinkled paper into jagged shards, he huffed until the bell tolled. It was habit by now to speed out of Orochimaru-sensei's class as fast as he could throw his folders into his school bag. But, after he was safely outside the door, he had forgotten he left Sasuke behind. He knew their confrontation could not occur anywhere within a 15 mile radius of the school—he was sure it was going to boil into a terrible fight, but he wouldn't allow him to slip away from him as he had all day. So, he plopped down to the floor and leaned against the wall, as his classmates slowly poured out of the shady, gray room. He waited a good three minutes as the last dregs of his class came out. 

"Sasuke Uchiha," A sly, throaty voice purred and Naruto stiffened against the wall. Scooting closer towards the open doorway, he eavesdropped with a sinking, cold feeling bubbling in his stomach. What would Orochimaru-sensei want with Sasuke? Maybe he knew Sasuke didn't have the right papers or…

"Of all the curious people to end up here, you are the most curious."

…Or maybe he already knew him before. 

"I don't see many other curious people—this town is teeming with sleepers."

There was something wrong with Sasuke's voice, Naruto noted as he nervously gnawed on his bottom lip. It echoed with more resonance and flaunted a deeper, more rumbling undertone. It converted his typical sentences into confident, guarded assertions. He sounded much older than he had before and it occurred to him that maybe this was the actual, raw Sasuke beneath the mocking pretense—forceful and domineering. But, along the edges of his authoritative voice, there was an undeniable hate polishing every syllable into sharp, hot pokers. If they had known each other before, Naruto was sure that their relationship had been tumultuous. 

"Ah, but as the old saying goes, birds of the same feather flock together." Orochimaru's voice sounded slightly derisive. "Enchantments attract other enchantments—The green flow of Viridis draws its children all together. Surely I taught you this much?" 

"They are well hidden."

"Aren't we all?"

There was a slippery quiet moment that glided like a fish through the room. Naruto swallowed hard.

" It seems slightly humorous for someone like yourself to be engaging in the frivolity that a small town high-school can provide." Orochimaru's tone resembled an eel and Naruto almost felt slimy, feeling as though it was slithering all over him. "Ah, something must have sparked your interest—something important enough to pull you away from your research." 

"You could say that." Sasuke was swiftly becoming angry…but how did Naruto know that? He didn't understand why or how he knew—he simply _knew_, like it was a natural instinct buzzing in the back of his head, that Sasuke was irritated. 

"A particular loud-mouthed blonde, perhaps?"

Silence. Naruto's heart galloped over several missed beats. His fingernails bit the tender skin of his palm. "I guess there is a reason you didn't look particularly surprised when my name was called."

"Nothing is surprising anymore. Everything has become predictable. The world lost its glossy wrapper ages and ages ago. I smelled the fragrant odor of your curse on the boy the second he walked through the door three weeks ago." 

"I thought you would've forgotten it by now." Sasuke was at his pentacle of frustration. _How do I know this?_ In moments he would snap.

"I will never forget." 

Another sickening silence progressed. The air that poured out of the room felt filthy and thick, almost too globular to cycle cleanly through the lungs. Naruto held his breath.

"Come on, Naruto, we're leaving." Sasuke declared stiffly, stalking out of the threshold seconds later. The blonde clumsily scurried up, blushing furiously, and glanced anxiously between the open doorway and Sasuke's retreating figure. Quickly, he peaked his head inside and gasped slightly. 

Orochimaru was smirking deviously as his light, tan eyes glinted yellow in a sun's ray that had snuck under the crinkled blind in the corner.

"Is there anything I can do for you, Naruto-kun?" He queried smoothly, his wan lips crawling further upwards. 

Shaking his head vigorously, he retreated from the doorframe. With one last befuddled glance at the threshold, Naruto scampered forward to catch up with Sasuke, but he had already disappeared. 

* * *

_Oh-god-it's-another-note-from-her:_ Bwhaha! A Laura-Jane record! I have written a chapter in less than a month's time. Ouch, that doughnut is coming up to eat me. ArgghH! This chapter gave me so much trouble. I feel like the writing is poooopy. I hope you guys don't think Sasuke coming to school with Naruto is cliché and stupid. Also, I'll explain the transfer papers in the next chapter. I won't just smoooooooooze over it and pretend it didn't happen. Ya'll are grand! Thank you for your nice reviews and your help with my college situation. I have orientation soon and my hair is purple –sobs-. I'm going to Disney world! (updating will happen though, I swear it.) ((21 pages, hell yes.))(((the majority of it is my ramblins Xd )


	5. Simple

**The Curse of the Red Vine Lovers.**

**Chapter Five: Somehow.**

**The distraught and otherwise useless author's note: **Well, everyone—I am officially lame. How lame you ask? Oh ho ho, let's delve into that question. I am at a friend's lake-house; we're going to Disney world/universal studios tomorrow at 6'a clock in the morning and staying there for 9 days. . .And I'm writing fanfiction at 12:23. Now 12:24. I am taking my cool hat off…I don't deserve its splendor.

Eee! I am endowed with Hamster! His name is Izekial Malackie Flapjack, or Mr. Flapjack for short. He's jewish! He's allowed to have a ridiculously long and hard to pronounce name. (The squeak from the hamster wheel is slowly driving me into insanity). Now Tinkers (le cat) is slowly prowling beneath the hamster table, eyes glinting with a powerful lust as they flicker momentarily up at the small, furry creature hobbling about in his wood shavings. He pooped in his freakin rolly ball. Freaaaaaakin great. I'm sure you're all enthralled with my kitten vs. hamster stories. (The cat got him! Oh no!)

Yay! This is the first story on my name that will be more than five chapters! XD –dies-

Celebration!

WARNING: This chapter is bitching long. I mean long. I mean loooooooooongasssssssss at least 30 something pages possibly. It's a damn, mutha of a chapter.

(The first paragraph is run-on-city. Population: I )

(This chapter is composed to Jupiter from the planets! Horay frivolity!)

(Bitch mother-fucker-shit! It's been two months! I is sorrrrrrrrry!)

Rummy's backkkkk!

* * *

_Excerpt from __**Rumsfield's Extensive Guide to Most Every Curse.**_ _Chapter 2. Page 89. _

"_..In the rare instance that a curse involves more than two persons, a certain dominancy is created between the differentiating parties. It is typically bore from casting a particular curse on one individual and then either multiplying the span to include others with a simple engorging spell, or it is constructed from a self-awakening curse that settles on the individual and erupts at a chosen time to drag the selected party member into whatever deed the curse originally intended. In these situations, a pecking order is created. The original cursed individual is typically, though not at all time, the Pre-Dominant. Other members will vary from Sub-Dominant to Lower-Subservient. Although it does not occur every casting, there are instances in which the Pre-Dominant either suffers from a stronger pull from the curse or holds a certain direction (though I do use the word very lightly) over the other party members. It really varies from curse to curse…"_

* * *

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--

Naruto had never woken up so abruptly in his entire life. He always slept on his right side which incidentally faced his window. So, as the maddening orange sunlight reached through the glass and warmed his face, his dreamy delirium would slowly shed away and leave his body to unthaw from the night's rest. With eyeballs aching with daylight filtering through their lids, he would grunt unintelligibly and then flip over. His dreams would then gallop to a hasty, but satisfying end as the strident buzzing of his alarm clock blared and he would arise, groggily scratching his eyes, feeling full and content, as if he had just consumed several bowls of Iruka's special homemade ramen.

But today he woke up on his back. His eye lids snapped suddenly open to stare perplexedly at the bumpy, star-like patterns on his ceiling. Where had his dreams been? Naruto always dreamed, but last night his mind had conjured nothing—just a still, blank grayness that had mashed any flippant nighttime wandering into a chilly bare picture. He shivered, shifting over on to his side. His bones felt like frozen stones inside his lukewarm skin. Cold sweat beads littered his forehead and moistened his hair. What was wrong with him?

Groaning, he slowly drew up out of bed and moved into the bathroom lethargically. The mirror there depicted a boy with glassy, red eyes and a befuddled, sagging frown. His skin appeared to be a shade greener than what it was last night.

_I look sick…_He thought dizzily, as he peered intently into his bloodshot eyes. He placed the back of his palm to his brow and found it cool and clammy. _But I don't feel sick… _

He didn't register anything physically wrong; his joints ached a little and he was slightly chilled but it was nothing serious. There was no foreign pain, no gurgling stomach, not even a hint of a sniffle. He was just…hungry. Ravenously hungry. But it was strange that his stomach was not protesting it's emptiness with loud, angry growls.

After quickly tossing himself together, he walked into the kitchen where Iruka was already bowed over a steaming skillet on the stove. Naruto grunted his standard 'good morning' and plopped down into one of the two chairs at the table.

"Good morning," Iruka chirped, poking at the white blob in the pan. "You're up early. What's the joyous occasion? Morning detention?"

"You're always so pessimistic, Iruka," Naruto answered, placing his cool, damp forehead into his hot palms. They felt like scorching steel against his brow. Why was his head so heavy? "Can't I just be up because I love the sunrise and want to get a fresh start on this bright new day?"

The greasy white globs in the pan began to sizzle warningly. Iruka artfully scraped them onto a plate and placed it on the table.

"So who's detention with today?"

Feeling suddenly exhausted, Naruto groaned and buried his face into his arms. Iruka nudged him with a plate but he shook his head.

"I'm not hungry."

_Wait…What?_

He lifted his head and peered down at the egg-blob-concoction he would normally find delightfully delectable. His stomach did not growl and plead for the food spread before him. He was starving; every small atom in his body was trembling in need, but food looked so—unappetizing. The strange feeling reminded him vaguely of a time when he was a small child performing his chores at the foster home. Because of his short stature, he was always made to scrub the dingy floors instead of sweeping and dusting like the other average-sized children did.

"You're the closest to the floor!" They had told him.

Naruto had always possessed a terribly erratic attention span and would often find himself viciously rubbing at the floor into the night because of his delaying day-dreams. In these awful hours, his stomach would cry loudly for food (dinner was denied to those who hadn't finished their chores) and his eye-lids would sloop downwards, frantic for sleep. The two needs became so overwhelming, sometimes, that they no longer acted as separate entities; they would just manifest into a single, superior yearning so desperate that it clouded his vision and made his very bones shiver. It proceeded on to the point where he could no longer understand what he wanted—just that he needed it.

A sizzling hot hand was placed against his chilly forehead and Naruto looked up into the concerned eyes of Iruka.

"God, you look horrible." His alarmed guardian voiced, putting his other hand on his own brow to compare temperatures. "Do you feel sick anywhere? Does your stomach hurt? Are you coughing?"

Naruto had to guiltily admit that he enjoyed the small wrinkle that crinkled between his caretaker's eyebrows and the gentle frown that was splayed on his lips. It felt so wonderful to be fussed over. For never having any other children but him, Iruka was a brilliant parent.

"Well, you don't feel hot." Iruka affirmed, crossing his arms and staring at him as if he was a puzzle to put together. The wrinkle lengthened and deepened. "But there's something wrong. I know it. Are you getting enough sleep?"

"Yessss," came the muffled answer.

"And nothing hurts?"

"Yessss,"

"Is something bothering you?"

A picture of a black-haired bastard popped up in his mind.

"Yessss---I mean, noooo."

"I knew it!" Iruka cheered. "Uzumaki Naruto, you can keep nothing from me."

Sighing, Naruto lifted his head, only to balance it on his palm. _Maybe I didn't get enough rest last night…_ "Really, there's nothing going on."

"Is it Shikamaru? Are you still mad at him for turning you in the other week?"

"Wha--? No, Shikamaru is fine." He frowned. "Sick all the time, but fine."

Iruka began to twiddle the spatula in between his fingers as he gazed attentively down at him. "How about your new friend Sasuke? Are you two still getting along alright?"

Naruto felt his eye twitch. Getting along was definitely not the proper term to describe their unstable and incredibly weird relationship.

"Yes." He grunted. "Splendidly."

"AHA!" Iruka suddenly cried, smacking the blonde square on the nose with his spatula as he gesticulated widely. "I told you there was something wrong! What did he do? He looked like such a nice guy."

Rubbing his nose fiercely, Naruto glared at his guardian. "He does not look nice! He's a mean, arrogant, stuck on himself asshole with a freakin' god complex. And for god's sake, he doesn't look _nice_, he looks like an ice queen!"

"What did he do to you?"

"He didn't do anything—he just…UGH!" Naruto cried, wringing his hands exasperatedly. And, without thinking, he allowed his inner frustrations to spill out. "He makes me so frustrated! One moment he's nice and _bearable_, the next he's cold and aloof, and then other times he's all over me!"

Iruka's face shifted from lighthearted to pensive in a matter of seconds and Naruto swallowed hard. Whenever his caretaker's soft brown eyes narrowed into that concentrated stare he knew that a long winded speech was collecting on his lips. Without breaking eye contact, he sat down in the chair adjacent and folded his hands neatly.

"Naruto, you know that I love you, correct?" Iruka always informed him of his parental love as often as he could almost as if to seal away the undefined twelve years that were void of his doting presence.

"Yes, Iruka." He sighed, trying to hide the smile that always simmered on his lips when the words were released.

"And you know I would love you no matter what you choose to do?...Well, except if you joined a gang. Then you'd be disowned in a matter of seconds, maybe sooner."

"Yes, Iruka."

"And you do know I hold no prejudice against any people of any kind, correct?...Well, except for gang members."

Naruto didn't think he liked where this conversation was directed.

"Yes, Iruka."

Iruka cleared his throat nervously and began to idly rub the thin scar that was etched across his nose. "And well, you know that if you happened to bat for the—the _other_ team, that I would completely and whole-heartedly accept you, correct?"

Naruto's neck began to tremble with the weight of his head and he buried himself in his arms again.

"I don't play baseball." He mumbled into his jacket sleeve, nuzzling his head into the crook of his arm. The fabric felt uncharacteristically rough against his skin "And I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Um," Iruka began hesitantly. "Um, well, if you… happen to be so inclined as to prefer the umsamesexthanidbeokaywithit."

Despite his weighty head, Naruto looked up into his caretaker's nervous face. Slowly, _carefully, _he spoke feeling suddenly very anxious himself.

"Care to clear up what you just said?"

Iruka breathed in and gazed determinedly at him. An unpleasant sensation crawled down Naruto's back.

"Are you gay?"

--

--

--

"WHHHAATTT?!"

----------------------------

Several agonizing minutes later, Naruto found himself ambling hazily down the side walk in route to school. He had tried to convince his guardian that just because he hadn't brought a girl home or really pointed out any 'hot chicks' while shopping, that that didn't mean he was suddenly attracted to boys. Of course, he neglected to inform him about his and Sasuke's little kiss/mouth-rape…it was one event in his life that he would surely take to the grave.

"Ow," Naruto murmured as his hand latched unto his stinging head. It felt as though someone was prodding areas of his mind with needles. He then yawned as another wave of exhaustion rushed through him. God, he felt horrible. And that terrible aching, longing made his gut clench and fold in on itself.

"Naruto-kun," a quiet voice sounded behind him and he turned around to see the tall, imperious presence of Hyuga Neji. Naruto wasn't great friends with his slightly creepy and mostly stoic senior, but he could be nice company sometimes as he often walked with the blonde to school (Naruto figured he lived somewhere down the street from him, even if his stately and groomed appearance suggested his home was in the lighter side of town). Typically, their conversations were one-sided, seeing as Naruto's mouth felt unused and betrayed if it didn't utter a word every 30 seconds, but Neji never seemed to mind; he would nod courteously and mutter words of agreement whenever appropriate. His demeanor was pleasant, but his pale, almost white irises kind of made him seem…slightly sinister.

"Neji-senpai!" He honestly wanted to sound excited because he hadn't seen Neji in a week or two, but his exhaustion seemed to of spread to his vocal chords.

Neji's pallid eyes narrowed slightly. "Are you okay Naruto-kun?"

"I'm just fine!" The blonde chimed, scratching the back of his head.

"You really do not look well." His senpai stepped closer and brushed his tousled bangs away to place a wan, cool hand to his forehead. Neji seemed two degrees cooler than the average human being--another notch on his growing creepy scale.

"I'm just sleepy." Feeling awkward that Neji had yet to remove his hand, Naruto stepped back and looked down at his watch, mocking surprise.

"If we don't go now, we'll be late!" Grinning, Naruto ambled onwards. Neji trailed respectfully behind him as if a silent bodyguard, waiting for terror to leap out from every dingy alleyway, examining the dim world with his pale eyes.

--------------------------------------

(oooh man, I'm on a cruise (-seizure-), so I can't exactly guarantee the level of writing on this part. I'm in the middle of the pacific/some-massive-body-of-water and I'm sea-sick like noooobodyyy'sss business)

"Are you sure you feel alright?"

"Yes for the-_love-of-all-godly-things-in-this-fucking-world-I-am_ FINE, Shikamaru!" Naruto finally hollered after the 10th question regarding his well-being had been voiced.

His friend's small brown eyes narrowed until they appeared to be mere dots.

"You look like you did after that time you ate the rotten hotdog."

Naruto growled. "It was a cheeseburger."

Shikamaru's russet eye-color seemed to darken and merge with his pupil as his lips drew into a tight frown. The voice that escaped his friend' lips was so unfamiliarly stern that Naruto's back stiffened in surprise.

"I can sense something is _off._ And as _one_ of your _only_ friends, you would think that you could confide something like that to me."

"Okay fine," Naruto snapped, slightly taken aback. "I feel like dog crap. Happy?"

The tense muscles in his friend's face slackened. His gaze suddenly rested on Naruto's belly. "Not in the least."

Naruto was really wishing he hadn't of sped out of his apartment so quickly to avoid more accusations against his very straight sexuality because standing at the gate, tapping an impatient foot and looking highly irritated, had been Shikamaru. The minute his tiny perturbed stare had landed on Naruto, he had been bombarded with questions.

"Are you sure your stomach doesn't hurt?" Shikamaru questioned again as they stepped through the threshold of school. "There is a stomach virus going around."

"I'm _sure_." Naruto seethed, pushing his way through the faceless bodies bunched around their lockers.

"If your stomach _is_ bothering you, maybe you should let me take a look at it." Shikamaru suggested as Naruto began to spin the dial on his locker.

He growled. "And how exactly is that going to help?"

His friend shrugged, looking as apathetic as usual.

"It doesn't even hurt," Naruto declared absently. This was mostly true—it didn't pain him, it just felt completely and utterly empty.

"Well, I'd still like to check."

Glaring, he opened his locker door. "Why can't you be a normal friend and just offer me some freaking Aleve?"

"Because your choice in friends is deplorable and I forgot my bottle at home."

"Grand."

Naruto scooped his heavy text-books into his open bag, slung it over his shoulder, and closed the locker door rather loudly. A couple of conversing girls spared a quick, condemnatory glance his way, but then continued chatting on. Rubbing his belly idly, Naruto headed in direction of homeroom, a harping Shikamaru on his heels.

"You know, if you start puking up your breakfast all over the school, I'm not going to drag you back to Iruka."

Eyebrow twitching perilously on his forward, Naruto finally turned around and confronted his twittering friend.

"Okay, I surrender. I'll tell you everything." Shikamaru's eye's widened as Naruto sighed and gazed at him solemnly.

"A couple of months ago I went to this insane party that was teeming with drugs and illicit sex and somebody must have slipped something into my drink because I woke up the next morning and I didn't remember anything. Since then, I've been vomiting every morning and my belly hurts like hell—it's getting bigger…Shikamaru…"

Naruto's eyed his friend gravely. "…I think I'm pregnant."

A new pain was added unceremoniously to his already tender head as Shikamaru whacked him with his fist and stomped away. Rubbing the sore spot, the blonde trotted onwards, turning the corner and…

And, well, he wasn't exactly sure. Suddenly, everything was moving in slow-motion. The pack of girls that had glared at him only moments before slowly walked beside him; each of their feet tilting and then lifting off the ground as if a weight was tied to their toes and then languidly descending to the floor again. Naruto's gaze fluttered over to the corner where a boy was sliding a book into his locker at snail's pace, an estranged paper flittering to the floor eerily slow. Then, his head, which also seemed suspended in this slow-moving delirium, turned inch by inch to face a tall, dark-haired boy leaning in the crook of where the lockers met the wall. The black stare rose slowly from the floor to meet his own gaze and unexpectedly, all traces of the room vanished---all that mattered, was important at all, were those gleaming, dark eyes. His stomach rumbled.

The next few moments would be recounted as the most delicious gossip to ever grace the walls of the diminutive, mostly quiet public school. Out of almost no where, resident nobody and self-proclaimed weird-o Naruto Uzumaki was backed up against a wall and then kissed senseless by one handsome transfer student Sasuke Uchiha. Girls squeal with delight in relaying the aggressive, almost possessive way Sasuke had crossed the hall and smothered his gay lover against the wall; the slightly forceful way he had captured his lips and then the fiery passion that had interlocked the two in a mad, crazy make-out session that had lasted up to two and a half _slow_ minutes. And then, the particularly close girls, who had been mesmerized by the blatant homosexual display and moved in for a closer look, would tick off to their friends, the way Uzumaki's bottom lip had finally slipped from the transfer student's teeth and the hazy glow that had surrounded the two as they stared dazedly into each other's eyes.

No one really chooses to remember the way Naruto's eyes had grown to the size of dinner plates after seconds of muddled staring; the way he vigorously scraped his tongue with his hand moments after; the way he had seized Sasuke's limp wrist and dragged him into the restroom, howling about tongue-rape, calling the authorities, and fruity, lecher bastards who couldn't keep their mouths to themselves.

No, that was definitely un-important.

Definitely.

--------------------------------

Naruto finally collapsed from the sink to the linoleum beneath him after ingesting so much water his stomach bubbled when he breathed. Sasuke who was, and had been, eerily calm through the entire, ehm, _ordeal_, peered quizzically down at him. Naruto glared at his reflection in the mirror.

"What were you thinking?" Naruto snarled in a low, menacing voice as he wiped the remaining water droplets from his mouth with the back of his hand.

"I wasn't." Sasuke replied simply, squatting down and handing him a paper towel. Naruto venomously swatted his pallid hand away.

"You first pull that stunt at the library…" The blonde's voice was soft, faint, but beneath it, a fury was rumbling and causing the words to quake. His eyes remained focused on his hands splayed over the glossy floor like crouching spiders. "…and then you claim it's a curse—not your fault. Then, you come to my home and do something weird and suddenly I'm in the worst pain in the world...you follow me and now you—you--"

His furious gaze lifted and isolated Sasuke. "I don't understand why you have to be here!"

Sasuke's mouth opened to answer but Naruto cut across him. "No, no, no! No more just excusing yourself and saying it's the curse! That's bullshit! If I can restrain the urge to make-out with _you_ in the hallway, surely you can do the same for me!"

"You really don't understand at all." Sasuke declared, his voice slowly rising in volume. "If you'd only let me explain and stop yelling—"

"NO! You don't need to be here! You don't have to be here! You could be off doing whatever it is you do at the library!"

"Let me explain--!"

"NO! The set perimeter—got that. I understand it, but that doesn't mean you need to be around me at all! You said so yourself didn't you? As long as you fully intend on coming back to me, you can go farther!"

Sasuke simply stared; his gaze offering no inkling of any thought that was churning behind his impassive face. Naruto's voice, which had been steadily rising, was now reverberating through the barren stalls and tiled walls. "THEN GO! You don't have to be around me! Go figure out this curse crap and THEN come near me once you've learned how to control these weird urges to kiss me—Honestly! How am I supposed to explain to the entire student body that little show out there?!"

Sasuke smirked. "You could tell them we're lovers, but I'm pretty sure that they already think that."

His level of frustration reaching its zenith, Naruto prepared to lunge forward and blindly attack his aggressor. But, just as he was settling up on his haunches, Sasuke pounced and he fell back to the floor with the dark-haired boy's hands on either side of his head, his knees on either side of his hips. His assailant was leering haughtily.

"You asshole! If I could right now, I'd beat your stupid---"

Naruto's threat was severed short by the sudden pair of lips that pressed softly unto his own. His brain's important functions seemed to slowly trudge to a halt as he felt that bleary, warm sensation infest his senses and convert his inhibitions to mush. His arms yearned to shove the offender off, but it seemed as if the neuron signal tapped on sleeping ligaments and muscles. Nothing would budge; his bones ached helplessly in his skin.

Slowly, his own lips, which seemed to of developed an entirely different motivation from his brain, began to move against Sasuke's. A long, thin tongue darted into Naruto's mouth, sliding over his teeth, gums, and even over the rough surface of his own organ. The feeling was wet and slick, though mind-numbingly fiery. Tingles rolled from his mouth and pooled at his toes. His chest felt like warm jelly and his lungs were empty, but content.

Sasuke's head finally retreated, and albeit slight panting, he managed to appear triumphant and domineering. _The bastard…_

"That shut you up." Sasuke explained absently, lifting up and off of him. Sitting up, Naruto glared with his glazed eyes. His lips were warm and tingling.

"It's just as the book read." Sasuke muttered, touching his swollen lips with a finger and appearing in another world entirely. "I guess it's true --I am the pre-dominant."

Just as it was with their first kiss, anger just couldn't worm its way back into his mind.

"What?"

Sasuke looked up, as if surprised by his presence. A loose, dark tendril of hair slid over his left eye. "I told you we were bonded Naruto." His eyes narrowed. "_Incredibly, indivisibly tight._"

"Yup, I've definitely heard that." Naruto leaned his heavy, tepid head against the counter and closed his eyes. He almost felt high—carefree and completely and utterly out of his mind. It was no use trying to muster up the fury he supposed he should be feeling right about then. He could wait (and then beat the ass-hole within an inch of his life). Besides, the little bubbles of warmth in his stomach made him almost giddy.

"However, we are not bonded equally." The boy proclaimed rather darkly. Somehow, that pulled a nerve in his jumbled mind and his eyes snapped open.

"Our souls are wound around each other so tight, and yet they still retain enough of a life-line to our own bodies for our flesh to recognize who is who."

"Still sounds like bullshit." Naruto murmured; the welling bubbles of bliss were beginning to pop and melt back into his stomach lining. But his mind still remained vacant of anger and in complete disarray, like a busted filing cabinet, shedding its important papers to the wind.

Sasuke rolled his eyes and pushed back the bothersome wisp of hair.

"It's like explaining quantum physics to a three-year old." Naruto interjected with a slightly hurt 'hey!' but Sasuke ignored him. "Imagine two threads that are exactly the same length coming from two separate spools. If you tie them together at their ends, one string will appear shorter because more of it was used in the actual knot."

Sasuke leaned back on his hands and gazed pensively at him, as if gauging what reaction would be summoned to counter his next words.

"Essentially, I am that shorter string."

Naruto was sure that, even though he had no idea what Sasuke was implying, it was something monumental in their already awkward relationship. Feeling suddenly uncomfortable in the still silence left by the strange boy's mysterious statement, Naruto opened his mouth to toss out a question, but found his voice would not stir. He closed it and became interested in the floor, running an idle finger in-between the creases of the linoleum.

"As for why I came to your school," Sasuke began quietly moments later, "there are many reasons." His eyes became soft, their light brown petals seemed to expand around his pupil. "I didn't come just to pester you, if you think that's one of them.

Naruto looked up.

"Although, it is a perk." A half-hearted glower appeared on the blonde's face. Sasuke's eyes reverted back into their stony, black display. "For one, I know Orochimaru, as you've probably already guessed. Anyone that has even a trace of my essence on them is in intimate danger. He can smell magic, or rather, taste it."

"Taste it?" Naruto repeated, feeling slightly disgusted. He didn't want Orochimaru tasting anything around him.

"Yes, taste it." He confirmed, looking equally revolted. "Along with that I also needed to be close to you—"

"Wait, wait, wait--!" Naruto butted in. "How did you even get into the school? You need transfer papers and a birth certificate and other stuff like that!"

"Forged." Sasuke replied simply. "I travel with one of the best forgers in the world—the only one to ever forge the Gutenberg bible and get away with it."

Naruto was startled for a moment. He hadn't thought of Sasuke traveling with anyone else other then himself or, more like, it didn't seem like anyone would nominate to spend any time around him _willingly. _It made him momentarily wonder who he was trekking around with, if they were as weird (perverted) as him, and why on earth they had landed in the singe-most mundane town on the coast of Japan.

"You just complimented somebody." Naruto stared at him, aghast.

"No, I'm just stating facts." He appeared to be slightly perturbed with the blonde's constant interruptions. When he spoke, his presence commanded silence, as if every word was desirable sustenance or a sweet nectar. But, his sentences were like rare morsels; he did not bestow them casually.

"So even a hard-ass like you—"

"Along with Orochimaru," Sasuke cut across him, "they're a lot more people here from the hidden villages than I first suspected and I'm someone that's…well-known through out them. It's not wise to blindly throw something of mine into an environment that may damage it."

_Something of his? IT?_ Was he talking about Naruto?

"I am not yours, _goddammnit_!"

Sasuke waved his hand heedlessly. "It's a figure of speech."

"The hell it is! You clearly said 'something of mine' and I am not at all—"

"The final reason," Sasuke interjected rather loudly and Naruto's mouth clicked shut, begrudgingly eager for information. "Is more profound then the other's. The curse wants us to be together."

Sasuke obviously thought this little tidbit would be more momentous to the blonde than it was as he emitted the same, calculating stare as before—waiting for the words to sink and then reappear on his face. Feeling as though something vital had skimmed pleasantly over his head, Naruto quirked an eyebrow.

"Care to clarify?"

Sasuke's aggravation amplified as he sighed. "Did you not feel unbearably sick this morning too? Didn't your head feel heavy, your body temperature cool? And did you not feel a terrible hunger food could not satisfy?"

With every passing word, Naruto felt boxed in—trampled into a corner. It was as if every noun and verb in his questions had settled on the tip of his nose to stare him accusingly in the eye.

"Yes," he murmured quietly.

"And have you noticed yet that you no longer feel that way?"

Actually, he hadn't. He had been too preoccupied what with public humiliation, kissing, and the warm dementia that had swiped his brain clean of all needless clutter. It hadn't occurred to him that his stomach felt completely content, his skin was once again tepid, and he could easily lift his head without his neck whining.

"Yes," he answered more loudly then before.

Placing a hand on the scummy sink, Sasuke drew up. He appeared almost too sterile in the glow of the florescent light. He seemed to clash against the grimy green walls with their tartar buildup and winding cracks. "Our souls can not handle our separation. For almost a week, we had contact every day, and then I did not come to see you the next. The souls did not take this lightly. They were aching for each other and we denied their needs. It began to build up yesterday as we had very little contact and escalated over night."

Naruto attempted to place the pieces in their respected slots. "So, you're telling me that today that ki—that thing that happened, was sort of like a…reunion for our souls?"

Sasuke snorted grimly. "It's more complicated then that but fundamentally, yes. The only medium a soul has is the body, after all."

Naruto averted his eyes back to the linoleum. He traced the diamond pattern with his finger, wondering whether this standard, boring men's bathroom had ever contained a conversation as bizarre as theirs, having it reverberate softly off the empty stalls and spin about in the air like a math problem that couldn't be solve. What did it think of the two, dissimilar boys, stealing moments of privacy in its depths? Taunting it with mystifying ideas and words that even people out the door could not understand?

_I should be angry_, His mind produced the thought uselessly over and over again, but no fury bubbled to the surface. He simply felt calm and easy. And it bothered him, even though he could not exactly _feel_ the frustration openly. It was only an idea--that later he would be mulling over this and find himself slightly disturbed that he wasn't howling about something or other. His lips remained loosely fastened.

He looked up at the dark-haired boy and stared at him almost pleadingly.

"Ne, Sasuke?" He questioned rather hesitantly. "What did you mean earlier when you said that you were the shorter string?"

His black gaze suddenly manifested the appearance of a stormy lake. He did not want to delve into it and actually pick apart what he had confirmed earlier, it was obvious. He had abandoned that subject to drown in the deep waters of their conversation afterward. His thin, pale lips tightened only an inch.

But, the bell began to chime outside the restroom door, the opening to the real-world. Sasuke looked outwardly relieved. Striding towards the exit, he halted for a second beside Naruto's crouched figure and laid a warm hand upon his head. Instantly, Naruto was overcome with the incredible heat, only now with such a startling vigor, he almost collapsed to the floor. He felt blinded, almost—a complete unthinking entity that had no sense to its name but still retained a vague grasp on hearing.

"If you don't hurry, you'll be late, dobe."

As the sound of the door clicking shut echoed through his head, Naruto was returned automatically to his wits. He was breathing a bit harder, the air in his lungs seemed unsatisfactory and the picky little organs were begging for a purer source. Not seconds later, Shikamaru barreled into the bathroom, his eyes alert and searching. They caught Naruto, muddled and dazed, on the floor.

His loyal friend's beady eyes narrowed in distress as he lent his hand to Naruto. He wordlessly took it and stood up straight. His bones creaked.

The two boys walked together closely out of the bathroom and into the hall. Shikamaru didn't ask again whether Naruto was feeling alright.

It was obvious he wasn't.

---------------------------------------------------

-

--

Somehow, they had ended up in the park.

But first, school had ended and sleepy teenagers with heavy heads had lethargically ambled through the gates and onto the paths to their homes. Naruto had grabbed the last of his necessitated textbooks out of his locker and followed Shikamaru to the doorway. But, unexpectedly, his friend halted beneath the threshold. Naruto had followed his gaze and found it fixed upon Sasuke, who had been standing directly in the middle of the courtyard. His inexpressive, black stare was latched solely on him.

"Please," Shikamaru had pleaded quietly, his hand resting on Naruto's shoulder for only a moment. "Be careful." Then, before the blonde could barrage his friend with questions as to what he had to be careful from, Shikamaru wordlessly stalked back into the school and around a corner. Naruto felt abruptly isolated in the emotionless, dark gaze, almost as if he was being buried alive; the walls of dirt slowly collapsing in on him.

The pair had walked away from school together, Naruto bickering about Orochimaru-sensei's obvious unfairness and lack of human emotion/sympathy (the grade he had received on his latest science test, despite Sasuke's tutoring, had been an F). Occasionally, Naruto would intentionally swerve the conversation in direction of the curse, trying to find the answer to his unrequited question earlier. Sasuke, however, had seemed pretty resolute in not discussing it, deferring the topic easily by insulting and riling him up. By the time they had reached the park, which was not even half a mile from the school, Naruto had blindly hurled his school bag away, loosened his collar, and lunged at Sasuke with intent to kill.

After a brief scuffle, somehow, Naruto's leg had smashed into the bench and he leapt up quickly, yelping and hopping on one foot as he cradled the other. This seemed to have concerned Sasuke who had stood up hurriedly, despite his crumbled exterior, and asked if he was alright. Through a lively variation of different curses directed in his general vicinity, Sasuke had cleverly guessed he wasn't.

And just as a flash of lightning had ephemerally lit the sky electric blue, Sasuke had offered his arm for support. The blonde had eyed it cautiously for a second, but with the torrent of rain that had suddenly dropped upon them, he quietly took it and the two hobbled through the downpour to his apartment. They had dried off there, watching a bit of television and listening to the slow drip of water leaking from the ceiling. Just as the rain stopped and the sky grew dark, Naruto had remembered his math homework and the folder in which his math homework was currently in and the place where his math folder was located—his bag, left behind in the park.

And somehow---just somehow—they had ended up lying on their backs in the aforementioned park with the still moist grass tickling their cheeks. The bag was nowhere in sight.

Lavender clouds veiled the stars and moon and the only light was that of a bright streetlamp in the foreground. Naruto comfortably lay with his jacket propped beneath his head (the night was unusually warm) and his arms outstretched widely. Sasuke had laced his hands over his chest. The world seemed drowsy and slow. It reminded Naruto of Iruka when he came home from a double-shift at the flower shop. He would find his fuzziest, warmest pair of pajamas and settle in front of the couch with a blanket draped over his legs. Sometimes, Naruto would join him and they'd watch dumb sitcoms and laugh at the idiotic puns, repeating them over and over until they drove each other crazy. Everything just seemed simpler.

"Ne, Sasuke?"

"Hn."

"Tell me more about magic, please?"

"That's a very broad topic, dobe." Even Sasuke's voice seemed sleepy; it was less mocking. "Also, it's sort of an out-dated term."

Naruto turned his head to stare at him. "Why?"

"Because it's hardly what most sleepers define as 'magic'. It's just a different branch of science."

"Then explain it to me."

"That is a feat even I cannot accomplish." Sasuke declared sardonically. The far-off streetlamp offered just enough light to create an eerie glow off his wan skin. "If you can't understand the Kreb cycle, then you sure as hell cannot understand the complexity of Viridis."

Naruto's bottom lip slid into his mouth and he quietly gnawed it, wondering whether or not the next topic was safe territory.

"What about…curses?"

Sasuke's voice instantly became a chord deeper and slightly crisper.

"They're still very complex."

"Can you at least try?" Naruto whispered.

Sasuke sighed very deeply. "What do you want to know?"

"How is a curse made exactly?"

Sasuke's eyes appeared almost vacant as he rattled off the information.

"Well, they are created by authors--"

"You mean like people who write books?"

Naruto watched as Sasuke's left eye twitched. "No, you moron, people that create spells and curses for a living. If you interrupt me again, I'm not telling you anything else."

"Sorry!" The blonde piped, not wishing to aggravate the boy further when he was so close to discovering some answers to his limitless questions.

"Well," The dark-haired boy said rather forcefully as if daring him to interject again. Naruto remained silent. "Typically, these authors spend decades finding the proper bond between their own native language and the strings of Viridis to accomplish their desired goal. It's all about intent, though. There must be the correct intent, word usage, and amount of Viridis present in the equation and even then there are a thousand other things that must take place to realize its function. Saying one word out of place will not send the spell or curse haywire, but it will most likely be too feeble to achieve its intended purpose. Everything must be absolutely perfect."

"Soo, you can see Viridis or whatever?"

Sasuke shook his head. "No, very few can actually see it. That is why there are so few authors left in the world—and even now their ranks are getting thinner."

"Why?"

"The hidden villages are currently in a sort of crisis."

"Really?! What'd mean?"

Sighing, Sasuke scratched his chin absently. "Another topic for another day."

"Is that reason you and your travel people are here?—why you're here?"

The dark haired boy turned his face to stare into Naruto's eyes. It was then he realized just how small the span was between their faces. He could almost feel the heat sliding off Sasuke's cheek.

"Partly." He confirmed quietly, his dark eyes appearing almost completely black in the dim lighting.

"Will you tell me why sooner or later?"

Sasuke grunted and faced the feathery purple clouds again. "It's inevitable seeing as it seems we'll be locked like this for quite a while…"

Not wishing to comprehend just how long 'a while' implied, Naruto blurted out another question.

"Do lots of people have this curse on them too?"

"None." Sasuke whispered reflectively. "That are alive, anyway."

Sensing the panic that was beginning to settle in, Sasuke cleverly diverted the topic.

"But yes, many people are cursed. Some don't even know about it."

"How can that happen?" The blonde wondered aloud, shifting a bit to get more comfortable. The rain droplets had soaked completely through the back of his shirt and it made his back feel unbearably itchy.

"There are thousands of different types of curses and just as innumerable amounts of ways to cast them. Sometimes they can linger for decades, other times they arise instantly. Some of them are so harmless you scarcely are even aware of them, while others are---just gruesome. Even your genes can be cursed."

"You mean like family lines?"

Sasuke's pensive gaze found Naruto's face. The sheer force the shadowy stare seemed to envelop him with was enough to transiently halt the air in his lungs.

"That is why it is so dangerous not to know who your family is."

The words seemed to drill into his pores and physically cool him. He shivered.

"You could be cursed," Sasuke said very softly, "and not even know it."

His entire body seemed to drop several degrees; his moist t-shirt clung to him as if frozen. The very tips of his finger, which were buried in the sodden grass, felt as though they had gone numb.

The inexpressive boy's eyes softened, the golden flakes within them swelling outside the pupil.

"I didn't mean to frighten you."

Naruto was not frightened. He was not scared. There was not a trace of fear in his entire body—but he felt so cold.

"I'm only saying this because…" Sasuke looked rather hesitant, his lips folding in as if trying to fortify his next sentence. "…I'm concerned for you."

Their faces were so very close and the night felt so simple and easy to maintain—nothing held deeper meanings; things were plain and practical. And their faces were so very close; the streetlamp's light that was snagged on the side of Sasuke's face seemed to glow and emit soft warmth. Their faces were so close…

"NARUTO!" A voice bellowed behind him somewhere. Instantly, Naruto's eyes snapped open and he was momentarily startled by the very _tiny_ distance between his lips and Sasuke's. He sat up and glanced around. On the very edge of the desolate, dark park, Shikamaru stood rigidly, his hand clasped around the handle of his missing schoolbag, which appeared from the distance, miraculously dry.

Naruto stood up, quivering slightly as his sodden shirt stuck defiantly to his back. Behind him, Sasuke drew up as well.

"What are you doing here?" Naruto asked, striding forward to peer at him in the light.

"I'm spending the night at your house tonight." Shikamaru declared resolutely, his beady eyes set firmly on Naruto. His determined voice offered no objections. The two simply gaped at one another until his friend severed the contact by glancing over his shoulder at Sasuke. His eyes narrowed as they slowly traced their way back to him. Naruto felt like a child caught in the middle of doing something very naughty and his cheeks burned.

"Come on, you don't want Iruka to worry, do you?" Shikamaru spun on his heels and marched off down the sidewalk. Naruto spared a tentative, fleeting look back at Sasuke. He seemed almost ethereal in the soft, white glow of the street light behind him, his dark eyes glinting and reflecting something completely unreadable—he was calculating, formulating, something was processing and lolling in his brain.

Naruto scurried quickly to catch up with Shikamaru.

-----------------------------------------

--

--

It was late, he knew. His alarm clock had long since suffered one too many beatings to actually depict the time anymore. Muffled grunts resounded from the floor next to his bed where Shikamaru had burrowed into a pallet of blankets and slept peacefully, albeit a bit noisily. In the weak orange light that slithered off the broken street lamp near his window, Naruto could see a sliver of his friends face smothered into the pillow. He seemed so much older then 17 at night with his eyes closed, even with his black hair released from its pony-tail to lie messily all over the pillow. He kind of looked like a sleeping solider—slept like one too. Naruto knew from experience he was a very, very light sleeper.

Being as quiet as he possibly could, which was quite difficult seeing as he was, well, himself, Naruto softly placed a toe to the floor, then a foot. When Shikamaru did not stir, he allowed the other foot to join its brother. Gingerly, he stood up.

Maneuvering silently through the blanket-cave on the ground, Naruto tip-toed into the living room and began to squint, trying to find something in the dim lighting. His eyes widened when they landed on a black, leather bag sitting along side the couch. Naruto opened it and heaved an old, out of date laptop from its depths.

He switched on the computer and waited for several minutes for the battered, ancient thing to boot up. Immediately, when the screen loaded (a picture of Iruka and his third grade class was the wallpaper), he double clicked on the internet insignia.

A particularly loud grunt from his room made him jump, but he continued as he found a search engine and feverishly typed in UZUMAKI, NARUTO into the bar.

The next screen flashed an assortment of websites, blogs, and videos, all relating to other blithe people who bore his name. Naruto scowled. He clicked back and re-typed his data.

UZUMAKI TRADGEY 1995

Another screen of websites cropped up, however the choices were sparse. Sitting innocently at the bottom of the page though, was a title that made his mouth suddenly dry.

MARRIED COUPLE KILLED IN TRAFFIC ACCIDENT—ORPHANED CHILD IN CRITICAL CONDITION AND NOT EXPECTED TO MAKE IT.

The mouse skimmed over the link very slowly and, after a couple moments of reflection, clicked it.

It was an article, archived online in a local newspaper from a Japanese city landlocked, three hours away. It was very brief, obviously unimportant next to whatever huge headline had been spread across the front page that morning. Naruto read:

_Uzumaki Akina and Masa of 33 Nozomi avenue were tragically killed last week when an intoxicated youth barreled into their car at a high speed of 55 mph. The police confirmed that the married couple was killed on impact and their two-year-old son, Naruto, was flung from his car-seat and virtually crushed by the two front seats. Medics rushed on the scene and pulled the unconscious child from the wreckage, but doctors at the Izanami Hospital now doubt whether or not he will make it through another week. _

"_He is critical condition," a dismayed Hoshi Takashi, lead physician on the boy's case, declared Tuesday, "but our staff of devoted doctors is doing their absolute best to pull him through." _

Something in the very pit of his stomach was bubbling and running through his veins. Involuntarily, he scrolled down and there, latched onto the short summary of the terrible disaster, as if sealing the article air-tight, was a picture.

A plain woman and a plain man stood beside each other, with ordinary, toothy grins on their lips. Their eyes were small and narrow—the man had an abnormally fat nose with horn-rimmed glasses perched on the tip. The woman's face was simple and practical, but not attractive. But what made his stomach melt and feel as though his blood was ice water was the color of their hair.

Black. They were your typical, standard Japanese family. Brown eyes, shiny jet-black hair. Naruto's hand inadvertently crept into his own tresses, pulling softly on the coarse flaxen locks.

These were not the people in the tattered black and white wedding photo he hid in a shoebox beneath his bed.

His eyes traveled their forms, their bodies---they were different people. Very different humans all together.

So madly engrossed in his mismatched genealogy, he did not register that Shikamaru had crept wordlessly into the room. He stepped around the couch and peered sadly into Naruto's shocked, troubled face. Tenderly, he closed the laptop together and stared sorrowfully at the twisted, white knot of fingers in his friend's lap.

"This makes things a hell of a lot more complicated." Shikamaru muttered. "Troublesome…"

Sighing, he plopped down beside Naruto, who remained completely unresponsive. Shikamaru reached over and gently untangled his tightly wound hands. He seized one in his own palm and squeezed it warmly. The other lone hand retreated to the blonde's mouth where he gnawed on the ragged nail of his thumb.

They sat there until dawn.

* * *

**The-Fat-Mother-of-all-Author's-Notes(be-prepared): **

Possible excuses as to why it took Laura-Jane 3.048 hundred billion years to update (don't kill her pleeeeeeeease):

-the useless three week span of absolute procrastination.

-beginning the story at midnight on vacation and then leaving the first two paragraphs to rot for another three weeks in an untouched document.

-Friends insisting we frolic around the town before college.

-buying bus-loads of college crap (my bed sheets look like an acid trip! Yay acid trip!)

-playing/working at Brusters, forgetting to make cakes, being yelled at by the old, overweight (bitch) manager and ultimately quitting the hard-earned job.

-reading fanfics like xxlight-kitsune-chanxx's _Spiral_ . It's absolutely adorable, reading it is considered stupendous. (I tried to help her beta, but I was so –cough- busy I only helped out on one chapter)

-falling into poetry mode (again) ((the dastardly bastard!))

-Cruise boat –plops over and dies-

-Orientation. . . . . . .COLLLLLLLLEGEEEEEEE! NUUUUUUUUU!

-and finally, this shit be at least 30 pages, hunnnny. Shit take forever to write, hunnnny.

There now, I am the undisputed queen of excuses.

NOW! I can bore you with chapter details. I don't know how you're all going to respond to this chapter. I'm pretty freaking frightened. Please don't be too harsh in your censures…I wrote most of it sea-sick and bored out of my mind on a cruise boat (apparently at 18 you're no longer a teenager and thus can not go into the teen lounge). Everybody was a rich snot.

And now, I can bore you some more. I'm going to college. –sobs- nooooooo, but this is happening this Sunday –sobs- nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu…I have no idea what goes on in college other than loads of drinking (which I can't do anyway) so I truly don't know how long it will take me to update. I WILL of course update, and if it looks like it's going to be quite a while then I'll leave you guys a note that says "Pleaaaase waiiit onnnn meeeeeeeeh!" but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to update soon. From what I've heard about this school, I'll have plenty of time to spend doing whatever I feel like doing.

I loooooooooooooooooooove you guys, you're all very very wonderful and your comments are the most encouraging things ever.

Also, please don't be upset with Naruto not looking earlier for his family. I'll just go ahead and tell you he considers it an insult to Iruka, but please wait til the next chapter so you'll understand, pllllllllllllleasssssssssssssseeeeeeeeeeeee?

-Laura-Jane-

Pss: (ya'll are the best!)


	6. Scars

* * *

**The Curse of the Red Vine Lovers**

**Chapter six: Scars.**

**The-probably-belated-anniversary-author's-note-of-cold-rationality: **

SOOOO! It's been a year and there is a startling amount of what, six chapters to this story? –dies- But that's okay—I've catalogued over like 120 something pages so whatev…kiss iT!>?!KN!NUE!

Anyway, college. I know many of you could give a flying flip about my personal affairs and would much rather be reading sasunaru smut then playing real-life dilemmas….so here's a smutty interlude you can read over and over again while I type out my adventures for the entire world (, same thing) to ogle.

(Sasuke gave Naruto a boner…then took care of it…sexily. Then, Sasuke and Naruto did it doggie style and of course! Our little blonde friend was the catcher, narusasu is unnatural…please don't make me spew my long intestines everywhere in disgust. And then there was some momentary angst when Naruto accidentally called out the wrong name while writhing passionately beneath the touches of his dark haired lover…but all's well because they just had more sex until Naruto forgot that name and in fact, forgot all other names entirely. Naruto was confined to a bed for the next week and a half, plagued with an aching butt, something that Sasuke gloated about around the water cooler at work with the boys.)

GAH!

So, facebook and cellphones are going to be the reason I fail out of college. And COLLEGE! Sooo, I went to the University that I sort of just picked because I was out of time and didn't want to have to think anymore…And it was terrible. There was puke EVERYWHERE. And even though I went with two of my best friends, I despised it so greatly that in two weeks time, I was like 'suck deez nutz'. So, the ritzy, expensive-oh-my-god-I'm-going-to-be-in-debt-for-the-rest-of-my-freaking-life private school in my hometown (that I didn't want to go to in the first place because it is in my town of origin erg) hadn't started yet, so I decided that's probably where I should be…where people actually employ their minds to do mindly things. And I LURVE IT!

I've met for the first time in real life--another yaoi addict! It was so strange, a face to face confession of liking boys doing it. It was soo strange and yet soooo beautiful. And! I even wrote some gay boy smut with another girl…Basically, my geekiness is finally being watered and I love it--it shall grow into a lovely flower and kind of be like the loco weed when animals eat it. And people actually like anime there! I can finally—actually open my mouth about it. AND! I live in a castle and people are outnumbered to deer 8:1. And we have cows. I lurve it. Don't be afraid of college, kiddies! It's a stupendous joy!

Oh, and here's the sort of link to the ephemeral HarryxRon smut I wrote (feverishly typed) on her computer. Go read her stories if you adore Harry Potter boys shagging. They're the shit.

www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/s/3879445/1/LauraJanesHarryPotterSmut

DAMN YOU ENGLISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

(college is fucking difficult.)

* * *

_Excerpt from __**The World is Far More Complicated than I Understand**__ by Imus Thames. Chapter 16, pg 586. _

"…_I watched the tribe interact harshly with the poor foreign boy. They spat on his small hut while he was out, tripped him while he carried his gourd of water back to his home, ridiculed him to his face…and all the while, I could see the fierce, powerful hate growing within him. Not only was he unaware of the viridis that licked his fingers and begged to be utilized, but he was also ignorant to the bubbling rotting viridis inside him. I knew action had to be taken when I saw it flicker red behind his eyes one day. It was no where near the level of damage that had to occur to manufacture another catastrophe…but it could mount and lead to one in the future._

_So, I informed the village head of my findings and I expressed my concern at the needless hate the villager's doused him with on a daily basis. He was terribly frightened when I told him of the products of extreme hate and rage that had been produced in Germany earlier that year. The unspeakable event that shattered all rational, hidden village thought. He agreed hastily he would speak to his people. _

_The next morning, the boy was found dead, his throat slit."_

* * *

"Your parents are dead." The administrators of the group home had stated resolutely.

"They are never coming back. You two are only allowed one photo of them—if that."

The frail-looking boy next to him had quivered with tears as he held a folder with the corners of photographs poking out of the sides. Naruto had peered wistfully at the two crumpled pictures in his own hands, focusing on each miniscule detail of the fading pigments. A baby swaddled in a blanket, tucked inside the cusps of masculine arms was etched in one; the other a wedding photo of one bright, cheery man and the most miserable looking woman Naruto had ever seen. He had guessed that these were his parents…but there was no way to know for sure. The man had his wide, toothy smile and the woman his small nose and heart-shaped face. It had been taken in a black and white film, which he guessed now was to add a rustic look to their wedding--the woman's dress was clearly not modern (probably a hand me down). Did these two people know that their possible son would stand six years later wondering what hair color was veiled behind that light gray pigment? Wondering why the woman with the thick glasses looked as though she were ready to sob?

"It is not as if we want to keep you from remembering your loved ones," the faceless man in his memories had said from behind his tall desk. "But you must live on and try to find a new family. If you are always focused on what you used to have, then you will never know happiness in the present."

The language at the time had been so callous and rough, like the palms of a foreigner rubbing along his throat. Ideas were being flung into his head, but he hadn't exactly matched them alongside their harsh vocal counterparts. He remembered now how difficult Japanese was at first—how every annunciation seemed to shun him, as if banning him from the language altogether. Japan was a homogonous world of obedient black-haired children and Naruto had always been a talkative, hyperactive blonde haired demon.

It was so easy to forget these times…Looking back now, they felt like another person's life entirely. But when these fleeting mental images swarmed in his brain, he felt comforted--they were far from this happy present he had struggled for. He could see them clearly now, gazing though an objective lens.

And they came in pieces…sometimes so random and out of place, they made his head ache. Nothing was linear.

He didn't speak Japanese in his earliest memory—his mouth emitted liquid words that sounded in the vocal chords as if they were trapped bobbing at sea. His voice was masked in this different language as he spoke childishly to a dog on a foreign street.

How could he have forgotten this?

No, he didn't forget it. He just didn't drudge up the memories. They were surely there, beneath his skin always, but he never took the time to set them apart and dig through them.

It was a betrayal to Iruka to think of these times because these were the minutes and seconds his guardian didn't occupy. And before that, it was a fruitless labor, remembering a place that only made him more befuddled and angry then before. These were the far, cold reaches of a time that no one but himself had access to. It was his own personal world of independence and Naruto needed people. He absolutely _needed_ them.

Here was this cobbled street again. He remembered the sun was so bright that it reflected off a store front window that displayed misshapen characters that he couldn't read. The shorts he had been wearing were itchy and thick, and his socks kept scrunching down to his ankles, refusing to stay set beneath his knee. His hand was above him, clasped inside someone else's. He couldn't remember whose hand, but that this was an ordinary, standard action…it didn't feel strange at all.

And there was this dog—a brown and white one with wrinkles in its joules. And it was staring at the world with a lazy tedium. Naruto yearned to excite it because he knew what it was like to be constantly bored. So, he called out to it.

"Halllo hündchen! Haallloooo!"

Had the dog turned his way?—moved any at all?

That's where that piece of his memory fell to a jagged edge and only a voice remained faceless above him, muttering:

"Nien, nien Elijah—nien nien."

And here there were others--

He was sprawled on his belly on thick carpet that was so incredibly soft, it made his elbows melt straight into the floor beneath it. There was a fat ginger cat weaving around his body and rubbing slyly on his legs that were up in the air. His hands were fiddling with a red toy dust cropper on the floor, making it take off and land as he growled out artificial engine noises.

And there were several others…slips and wisps of moments that did not have context or a time line, they just existed. There was a red Fogarty dress draped over a chair next to a quilted bed. There was a brick wall with a brown-eyed boy peeking through a hole in the middle. There was a cobbled street with people clad in bizarre, old-fashioned clothing frolicking about. There was….

…This was not a dream he was immersed inside. He comprehended that he was asleep, or at least his eyelids were closed and that his head was resting on Shikamaru's knee. But, these were not dreams swirling around in his head. These were bits of his lost self he was squeezing through his brain—he had never been this far before--abruptly, the pictures darkened.

…There were thin lips, glossed red and hands on either side of his face. A beige pearl necklace was aligned around a thin, white neck and it glinted in a red light. Then, the hands pulled and pointed fingernails sliced through his cheeks. A fierce burning erupted. A soft, strangled chanting assaulted his ears as a thick liquid dripped from his face to his shoulders.

"Sein Gesicht….Sein Gesicht…"

The image abruptly halted, but the distraught voice lingered, increasing in volume. Now, it sounded as if two voices were tearfully murmuring the same inconceivable words, clinging to them as if a lifeline to each other.

"Sein Gesicht…Sein Gesicht…"

His eyes snapped open when he realized it was his own voice. The knee beneath his head shifted and he looked up into Shikamaru's blurry, but clearly pensive face. He felt uncomfortable locked in this all too somber gaze. Rubbing his own eyes, Naruto sat up and retreated to the other end of the couch. He was feeling distinctly un-masculine.

"What time is it?" He groggily asked, lounging into the soft corner of the tattered couch.

"Around 12." Shikamaru answered. His eyes remained grave. "You slept for a couple of hours."

Swallowing a biting sense of betrayal, Naruto questioned about Iruka.

"He's at work." Shikamaru's rigid shoulders did not flinch as they passed along the information, but they seemed as if they secretly wanted to. "I told him you got sick during the night. He offered to stay home, but I said I'd stay."

Naruto's lips honestly wanted to say 'good', but his vocal chords wouldn't wiggle out the words.

They sat in a waiting silence for a while. The sun's cheery beams slipped through the large window in front of the television, throwing its gleaming strands onto the bookcase and the family pictures stacked in frames there—all the people and moments Iruka cared for were purposefully captured. His dead parents, the first class he taught, Naruto and Iruka waving peace signs, Iruka's best friend. They glittered brightly, even under a film of dust. Naruto closed his eyes and drew his knees to his chest.

Shielding his eyes, Shikamaru got up, closed the curtains slightly, and returned to his spot. Naruto lifted his head.

"Have you ever heard me talk in my sleep?"

Shikamaru turned to stare at him. "Yes—you do all the time."

It was true. In the group homes, no one wanted to room with him because he was said to mummer incoherent babble all night. When there was no noise outside to clog his ears, he even trashed violently. But, he thought that had abruptly ended when Iruka had taken him in.

"Is it always nonsense like that?" He asked, idly popping his neck. Shikamaru's gaze was thoughtful, as if it were pulling his face off in layers, wondering what motions the brain was taking.

"That wasn't nonsense." His friend replied slowly. "That was German."

He felt so troubled, like he was walking on a rickety board teetering in the air. German? Was that the language he had been born into?

As if sensing his wonderings, Shikamaru asserted, "You know that article didn't necessarily pertain to you. Uzumaki is not that rare of a name. Neither is Naruto."

A rush of anger fueled Naruto's mouth . "Then explain how it's dated at the same year my parents supposedly died in a car crash. I woke up in a hospital in 1995 for christ's sake! Don't you remember me telling you that they said I had been asleep for a long time and that my memories would probably be jumbled? Don't you remember when I told you that I couldn't speak for the first couple of months afterwards and could hardly recognize my own name? What the hell is this?! It's like a fucking _conspiracy_!"

Shikamaru's meditative silence persisted. It only shoved Naruto's already frayed nerves further.

"And unless I'm a biological anomaly, I can't be the child of an average Japanese couple-- I'm even speaking German in my sleep."

Naruto fell quiet and simply watched Shikamaru, whose eyes had retreated to his cupped hands in his lap. He always appeared to be so regal with his straight spine and loose gestures. It was as though he owned the very air.

"You'd think that if I was that foreign, I'd be a little taller ne?" Naruto remarked lightly, and then feeling abruptly queasy, his gaze found the top of his kneecaps. "Is Naruto even really my name?"

"Naruto," Shikamaru declared determinedly. Looking up, he found a strong resolve glinting in his typical lethargic stare. "Have you even stopped to think that maybe you were adopted by the Uzumaki's at a young age?"

Naruto shook his head. "I didn't even recognize those people."

His friend's eyes widened slightly as his stiff spine became impossibly straighter. "You remember your parents?"

Naruto's thoughts trailed back to his earlier delirium, to the thin, red lips that were stretched into the same miserable line that the woman in the wedding photo had worn.

"Somewhat." He then added. "Plus, they're not the same couple in the wedding photo of my parents."

Shikamaru appeared unexpectedly alarmed, sitting completely up and out from the back of the couch. He had forgotten he had never told him about the ragged picture—it had just been too personal.

"What picture?!"

"An old man gave me two in the hospital."

Shikamaru seemed sincerely angry. "How come you never told me about this?"

Naruto scowled. "I don't have to tell you everything."

A mute horror glittered in his beady eyes.

"What?" he interrogated, shifting from his lounging position to a more alert stance. He sensed he might be over-looking something incredibly crucial.

"What's wrong with having a picture of my parents?"

Very much unlike himself, Shikamaru covered his distressed face with his hand and leaned his head back on the couch. He never, in all his five years of presence in Naruto's life, had openly portrayed his exasperation in such a manner. He was always so fluid-like and easy, never had he appeared so restless. A nervous chill churned in his stomach.

"I can't believe how incredibly complicated this has become." His steady voice was muffled by his palm. "So many years of sacrifice and toil, straight down the toilet."

Naruto was mystified, feeling as though he was so submerged in a foggy pool and there was no amount of help that could yank him out again. As his hand crept away from his face, the blonde was suddenly in-captured by the most focused stare he had ever seen emitted from those brown eyes. The breath in his lungs felt trapped for a moment between his ribcage, as he simply gaped at this un-veiled, raw being before him. This was Shikamaru, not the lazy-eyed comrade that had walked beside him all these years.

"What do you mean…"Naruto trailed off, his tongue no longer pliable enough to construct sentences. He scooted back into the arms of the couch, bringing his knees to his chin as a sort of wall of protection between him and this foreigner.

"There are many things," Shikamaru recited slowly, "Sasuke Uchiha is known for, but at the top of the list, he is the only living carrier of the exceptionally rare Curse of the Red Vine Lovers."

Naruto swallowed the spit pooling in his mouth.

"There may be several reasons he's attached to you out of all the sleepers in this town, but the theory I have been regretfully supporting as of late, is that the legendary curse has finally found its intended mate."

Naruto's stare shifted guiltily to his toes.

"Damn it," Shikamaru swore under his breath, making him jump. He never cursed; he always seemed too dignified to spout any vulgar.

They both simply sat alongside each other for a while, wordless. The sun's rays that had snuck through the small space of the curtains were receding from the room, making it seem parched and thirsty. Naruto couldn't help but feel repulsive.

"How do you know Sasuke?"

Shikamaru cut across him fiercely. "Before you start pestering me with a limitless amount of questions, know two things: One: I will only answer so many before I have to leave you and two: you need to understand something important."

Naruto blinked.

"I will not tell you more than what you honestly _need _to know." He sighed. "You're in so far --your mind will probably be rearranged anyway."

"What do you mean—"

"And before I answer anything, I need a question answered myself." He paused. "What happened the day you met Iruka?"

Feeling as though his brain had twitched and missed a monologue or two, Naruto asked, "What? Why?"

Shikamaru's eyes narrowed. "Just tell me."

"But I already told you—like three or four times!"

The stern, foreign man shook his head. "No, you told me that you ran away. And when I asked you why, you always told me something incredibly stupid and off the wall." He snorted humorlessly, his direct, shrewd gaze softening back into the perturbed stare Naruto was accustomed to. It made him feel more at ease. "You came up with some of the dumbest, most immature crap I've ever heard of. A three-headed mule was attacking your roommate? A fire-breathing Gecko was crawling under your bed? Why would you even make that crap up?"

Naruto's shoulders became tense, his stare shifty and uncertain like an admonished child.

"You'd know if I lied anyway. You always do. And I didn't want to tell you."

"Why?"

"Because it's not something I want to tell anybody." He murmured quietly. "It's scary."

Knowing that this was his one shot at releasing some questions from his friends guarded mouth, he exhaled. It was time to negotiate his own past secrets for the revelation of other ones.

"I—" How did he begin this? He had escaped from the group homes plenty of times. Who hadn't in those dingy, dimly-lit houses been tempted to see just how far they could run until they were hungry and cold? Most of the time he came back to a firm scolding hours later, but there were only three times he went missing for days—the last for good.

Naruto wasn't a delinquent; he always bared his fangs when provoked, but mostly that just ended in him sporting black and blue lumps. However, he had the uncanny ability to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This had earned him two strikes on his juvenile record. It was after he was carted back to his room with having only hours before explaining to an uncaring officer his predicament--that he stuffed an extra shirt into his hoodie and stepped out into the streets.

"It was really really weird that day," Naruto licked his lips nervously and maneuvered himself to sit on top of his legs. "Because finally a couple was going to adopt me, which was weird in itself because no one had ever even shown interest. It's like there's this--this barrier between me and other people."

Shikamaru regarded him wordlessly.

"And I was thinking, finally I'm getting out of here! but um, it was weird because they'd never even met me. I'd never even had a conversation with them! They just sort of…picked me. So, I was supposed to be in my room packing for our 'trial weekend together', but I knew they were in the kitchen and I needed to know whether I should bail or not, so I went downstairs and snuck a peek through the doorway."

Naruto's eyebrows knitted together as the formless voices performed their conversation again in his head.

"_It's not as if his crimes are __**that**__ violent. This is completely ridiculous." _

"_He punched a kid for calling him a runt, Kurenai--__**just**__ for calling him a runt! You don't think that seems to spell out an underlying tendency towards violence?" _

"_So? He's twelve, Asuma—he shouldn't be expected to act like a responsible adult. And in case you haven't noticed, he is horribly short. What normal kid wouldn't feel just a bit agitated when someone calls him a runt?" _

"_The kid has a black eye, a broken nose, and he lost a tooth. You know just as well as I do that he is only awake by extreme grace. He's really pushing his privilege a bit too far if you ask me. Something should've been done at the first transgression." _

_A sigh._

"_So, to solve all his problems, they're going to put him to sleep?" _

His stomach churned disturbingly. A tingling crept up his windpipe and his arms almost shook.

"They said they were going to put me to sleep and—and I didn't know what to do, Shikamaru! So, I wanted to open the door on them, catch them in this huge plot then turn them in—but, the lady that was standing there rooting me on was really pretty but, her eyes….They were, well, red."

Naruto stole a relaxed breath. "After that, I just sort of ran."

Shikamaru lingered in his wordless contemplation, his stare calculating his fingers. It was moments before the information seemed to settle at the base of his brain. "And then you ran into Iruka?"

Warmly smiling, Naruto recounted the memory in his own head. The moment the world discovered the necessary cogs to set his life on the correct tracks—the life he was supposed to have lived from the very beginning.

"It's the only way I know there's a god. That day, of all days, of all times, I ducked into that stinky-ass alley, and there he was coming out the side door of his apartment building. I scared the living shit out of him, yelling 'they're going to kill me!' over and over again…But you know Shikamaru?"

"I know it sounds weird, but, he was the first guy I ever thought I could actually trust. I liked people until then, but he was the first guy I'd ever really—clicked with. Is that the right word? I dunno. And then you…You I clicked with."

Shikamaru's stare would not lift from his fingers. The tanned proteins inside his eyes looked like turbulent mud puddles. "Have you clicked with anyone else?" He questioned softly.

Naruto replied in an equally quiet voice.

"Sasuke."

Could the loitering quiet that reigned in the room be considered an actual silence? Naruto couldn't tell—it was more like a pause and shift in directions, like a train had hit the turning tracks that sent it chugging the other way.

"How do you know him?" His voice was almost breathless.

Shikamaru lounged back into the sofa, clearly agitated that it was his turn to be interrogated.

"As you've probably already figured, I'm from the hidden villages."

Naruto waited for more and clenched his jaw irritably when it didn't come.

"And?" He seethed, feeling reminiscent of his conversations with Sasuke.

"Sasuke's a pretty famous character among the currents of Viridis," He stated indolently, ogling the ceiling in an uninterested daze. His words seemed too rehearsed and he appeared to be like an actor reading dispassionately from a script.

"He also comes from a talented clan of Viridis wielders—very excellent spell authors…Also world renowned hypnotists. They're probably one of the most well respected clans inside the hidden villages." He grunted, "nothing more than doll-makers really."

"_Doll-makers?!_"

"Yes," He said casually, "his brother is famous as well, however definitely not for the same reasons."

"He has a brother?" Naruto gaped. "He never told me!"

A furtive thought snaked through his head, _it's not like he told you anything about himself in the first place._

"Why is his brother famous?"

"That's not something that you need to know." Shikamaru's face was too emotionless, too aligned. No muscle even twitched to emit the words; the skin simply remained smooth and wrinkleless and his eyes tried too hard to retain their previous, lethargic glance. Before Naruto could hurl out another question, Shikamaru glanced pointedly at his wrist watch.

"I have to go," he announced. "Iruka's going to be hella mad when he sees that I didn't stay with you. Will you please tell him I had somewhere I had to be? He was really worried."

Naruto glared. "So what, you're just going to leave me so confused like this—completely alone after I just learned that something's really fucked up with my heritage and the facts I'm getting from people?"

He hadn't meant to let it slip, but it barreled angrily from his lips. His eye twitched and he felt dizzy with the implication.

"Are you even really my friend?"

Shikamaru remained un-affected by the question that terrified him. His composure lingered as he stood up and collected his jacket off the side table.

"Don't be daft, Naruto. Of course I am." He said, turning from him to hunt for something in the recliner. His hand retreated from the cushions a moment later with his keys. The air suddenly felt heavy as Shikamaru simply stood there, his arms straight to his sides, his back hacked with stiff muscles.

"Why else would I be hanging around you if I wasn't your friend?"

It was a test, or rather, a trap--that's how it seemed to Naruto. It seemed inquisitive, the very words quizzical, subtly begging to know what theories his stray-way imagination had concocted. And after he had laid his trap, he would wait like a hunter for his ideas to poke their innocent little heads out, and then bash their skull in.

Naruto knew the proper way to counter a trap was with another.

"Why are you here in this small dumb town? Why here?"

"Business," Shikamaru replied, turning around and crossing his arms. The trap had sprung with no animal inside. "Beneath the library, is another library-- this one restricted access only. You must be a member of or have strong, personal ties to the hidden villages to gain admission into it."

"Why?"

Shikamaru appeared agitated. "Because, you idiot, the books are mostly all on the subject matter of magic and viridis—most are worded so scientifically and consist of such complex theorems, not even the brainiest of modern sleeper scientists could figure them out. Plus, we don't want the secrets of our world spilled."

Naruto could hardly believe that all those agonizing hours he had spent laboring in the library, that beneath him people from the hidden villages were frolicking about and learning from their cryptic, unintelligible science books.

"What do you do there?"

Shikamaru's skin gathered too tightly again. His lips seemed to recede at the corners.

"They're threats against it everyday. People want it burned to the ground." His eyes were too focused, too directed; his voice un-characteristically even. "I help guard it."

"Bullshit."

Shikamaru's eyes narrowed.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean bullshit!" Naruto yelled. "You're lying!"

Shikamaru snorted. "I don't know what you think you know, but I can assure you that's what I do here."

"Maybe, but you're lying about something."

His friend's face contorted into an unusually cruel expression. "Just what do you think you know?"

Naruto's eyes traveled to the ceiling, contemplating the plastered star patterns. Licking his lips, he returned his gaze to Shikamaru. He could feel the intensity crackling on the sides of his eyes.

"I know that you the first time you met me, you hated me."

Shikamaru's face slackened in disbelief.

"What?"

"I know that you hated me for a long time afterwards too. You always hung out with me like you had to--like you were dared into doing it. At first I thought someone had, and I got real pissed but I didn't want to loose my cool and have everyone make fun of me. So I tried to act really detached and—and really, really cold. It only seemed to make you hate me more…And I didn't know what do. You just dragged behind me, day in and day out."

The smile that appeared on Naruto's face was subdued; almost as if it was battling with the teeth for free reign.

"But then you pulled me out of the way of that bus and I saw the look in your eyes. You were scared! It was one of the best days of my life."

Shikamaru turned around abruptly, slinging his jacket on as he marched towards the door.

"Wait!" Naruto cried, leaping out from the couch. "Where are you going?"

"I have somewhere to be." He replied resolutely.

"You're really going to leave me alone? After all this crap?"

"I'm not leaving you alone." There was a pulsing current of some sort of irritation present in Shikamaru's voice, but it wasn't his standard lazy agitation. It seemed deeper; almost conflicted with sadness.

"I'm leaving you to Sasuke."

Naruto's eyes widened.

"He's been outside the apartment door all morning." He explained, striding lazily towards the door. A panic cropped up inside of Naruto all of a sudden, watching his only source of information unlatch the lock on the door. His frenzied mind gargled out the question he had been mulling over as they chatted.

"You know something about my family, right? I know you do!"

Shikamaru sighed, his hand halting on the brass knob. "Later, Naruto."

"No, please!" He cried out frantically, feeling his vocal chords twitch as a knot of pain latched unto them. His eyes desperately wanted to emit at least one tear to ease the pressure brewing behind them. "You're the only person I've got!"

A sharp silence flooded their communication. It was obvious that Shikamaru could not effortlessly lie himself out of displaying his vital secrets. Naruto was just too good at detecting them.

"My mother," Naruto licked his lips nervously, "was she—did she…um…"

"Did she what?" Shikamaru's voice was so quiet the clanking heater in the corner almost sucked away his words.

"Was she the one who gave me these scars on my face?"

"Yes."

Silence.

"I'll see you later."

Shikamaru opened the door, revealing Sasuke leaning against the wall facing it. His stare remained on the floor as Shikamaru stepped out and passed him. What was so frightening, Naruto noted, was that the two effortlessly bypassed each other without so much as glance or even a twitch. There was no pulsating tension stringed between the two, just a clean detachment. It almost made him sick regarding it, or maybe that was just the nausea that had been bubbling in his belly all morning.

After Shikamaru had safely descended the stairs and was thusly out of site, Sasuke looked up sharply and immediately locked eyes with Naruto. His gaze clearly spelled agitation. He stalked inside, shut the door, and stood, glaring, before Naruto perched on the couch.

"So?" He prompted in a dull voice.

"So…?"

"Are you going to tell me what was so devastating that I woke up at 5:30 in a tizzy?"

Naruto's eyebrows furrowed at the aggravated tone. "Who the hell uses the word 'tizzy' anymore?

"You're so dumb," he murmured. Sasuke crossed the room in his artful, smooth stride and sat next to Naruto on the couch. He could see from this closeness the elegant, though subtle concern lolling in Sasuke's eyes.

"What happened?" He asked softly.

"I—I don't really think I could explain." Naruto replied, beginning to gnaw on his thumb nail.

In one fluid movement, Sasuke moved Naruto's hand away from his mouth and placed it gently on the cushion beneath them. There was no blinding heat to muddle the logical workings of his brain.

"I've had two and half hours of sleep." Sasuke stated crossly. However, the soft, cinnamon petals in his eyes reflected a veiled worry. "You're going to try."

And he tried. He attempted to enlighten Sasuke with all the plentiful, suspicious crap that had transpired through his life, beginning with his inability to properly remember his parents and his childhood before kindergarten and then later concluding with his and Shikamaru's queer conversation. Sasuke hardly said anything; his eyes simply remained glazed with that calculating, deducing stare that was known only to him. The deep coal hue seemed to gobble and process the words the moment they tipped off his lips. Sasuke only interjected at the very end of Naruto's explanation, somewhat amused.

"Doll makers?" He snickered. "He really called us that? How positively prejudice."

Naruto's eyes danced frantically in his head. "You're missing the bigger picture here. He knows that we're cursed. Isn't that really bad?"

Sasuke folded his arms and leaned back into the couch. "I guess. Who knows really until we see the final outcome. I think it's fantastic nobody in the hidden villages knows you're name—it makes things all the more easier."

"But that's the thing, Sasuke…" Naruto picked nervously at his fingernails. The implication of his next statement felt like a weight in his lungs, making it slightly difficult to breathe. "Shikamaru sort of implied that I'm—or maybe my parents…._somehow_ I'm connected with the hidden villages."

Sasuke snorted. "Well, that's obvious."

Naruto felt like a balloon popped at its rubbery climax. "What?"

"Have you ever looked at yourself?" Sasuke questioned, stretching like a young cat and standing up. Naruto glanced at him just as his shirt slid up a couple of innocent inches and displayed a momentary glimpse at faultless, stone-like white skin. His skin tone and really everything about him appeared so unnatural and inhuman, but something about the contrasting dark and light hues of the boy made his eyes instantly seek it.

"What do you mean?" His eyes wandered back to Sasuke's face. "Of course I have. What kind of a dumb question is that?"

"Stand up." The dark-haired boy commanded his face smooth with expressionless lines. Naruto did as he was told.

"Now look into the mirror."

He peered into the wide, ornately framed mirror plastered on the wall beside them. It had been one of the only relics to be safely rescued from Iruka's parent's burning home. He saw only himself inspecting his face dumbly. He noticed also his t-shirt was unbearably wrinkled and his hair had toppled from their spikes to rest tiredly in his face. He looked absolutely exhausted.

"Um…What am I supposed to be looking for?"

Abruptly, the measured distance between his and Sasuke's bodies was closed. The dark haired boy's warm breath softly swept his tousled locks. His head appeared towering over Naruto's shoulder, his black stare incredibly straight and directed. It seemed to attach to his own widened gaze and almost hypnotize him. His chest was mere inches from his spine and electricity seemed to flitter in between the small length. Sasuke's hand emerged on his face and he gently traced his nose with one finger. Naruto's arms erupted in goose bumps.

"Your nose is too straight." The finger slowly trailed to his chin. "Your skin too smooth. You've never had to shave once have you?"

Naruto would've become grossly cross at that statement had his mind not have been completely engrossed in Sasuke's inspection. Shaving was a touchy subject with Naruto. Everyone used to boast in junior high about shaving their growing beards, but never once had a hair sprouted on his face other than on the top of his head and eyebrows. It made him feel horribly un-manly.

"Your lips, too perfect." He tapped them lightly. "But most importantly, _these_."

His finger slowly trailed one of the long thin lines he had only an hour earlier learned were scars left by his own mother's nails.

"They're just scars." Naruto claimed dizzily. "I told you Shikamaru said my mom gave them to me."

"Yes," Sasuke's voice seemed so far disconnected from the small, shabby apartment. He thought it would sound more natural echoing in space somewhere. His stare appeared to miss Naruto's form entirely and peer into another mystical realm of existence; a world with all the answers. "but how?"

"I told you, with her fingernails."

Sasuke's other hand came into view and both appendages traced the lines, as if creating the marks for the first time. Naruto could not feel the skin there. "Yes, but can fingernails cause the skin to turn black like this? I don't think so."

Why was it so difficult to speak?

"T-then what did it?"

"A high concentrate of something." The hands retreated from his face and there was a distinct cold longing in his cheeks afterwards. "But who really knows?"

The air in the room was too heavy a burden on Naruto's shoulder's. His arms began to tremble and his legs yearned to collapse. All the muddy thoughts and grimy half-bits of information seemed to howl rancorously through his skull.

He kept hearing Shikamaru's dull, bored voice declare, "Don't be daft Naruto. Of course I'm your friend."

He kept seeing his neat ponytail sway back and forth as it descended the steps out of sight. His stomach bubbled with nausea. All he wanted to do was collapse to the ground and sleep until all the pieces of his mind waded back into their respective slots.

"I'm so tired of this." Naruto seethed in a strangled tone. At any next moment, he thought he might cry with frustration. He was no longer concerned with appearing strong and masculine. He simply wanted to release the backing well that was mounting inside his chest. "I'm _so fucking sick of all this_."

As if sensing his imminent fall, two sturdy arms wrapped around his torso. Sasuke carefully led him to lie back on the couch and then followed, his arms re-latching securely around his belly. His head was positioned behind Naruto's own; his hot breath swirled and stroked the back of his neck.

"Sasuke?" He questioned hesitantly, wary of possible perverted motives. Although there was a blatant tenderness in the weight of Sasuke's arms, as if they were trying to be as downy and soothing as possible without disrupting the breath in his ribcage.

"Hm?" His humid breath skimmed along his neck in a short spurt. "Uncomfortable?"

"No, I just…"

Naruto was sure as hell not going to convey how relaxed he was lying inside his arms. Maybe it was wrong to feel this way after only knowing this boy for a mere month or so, but the tangled heaps inside his mind prayed for a savior—and the only person around was Sasuke. The image of Shikamaru's retreating ponytail disappearing down the steps haunted him again. Was Sasuke his only friend?

He needed to be cared for. His veins ached and crooned for it. His mental stamina was renowned among Shikamaru and Iruka. He could trudge through mental adversities and keep his shoulders tall without drooping for days. He could take care of himself….But right now, the leaflets in his mind were so dispersed that he wasn't even certain that he could breathe alone. _Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? _

Maybe the child he had erected himself to become in his brain was entirely formulated off lies. Maybe his entire being was just another slip of a lie plastered on a tall, dithering mound of lies. He had never been able to validate his own existence by himself. He _needed_ other people. And at the moment, by coincidence or maybe fate, only Sasuke remained.

Only Sasuke.

A thought suddenly occurred to Naruto, gladly shaking him from his tomblike introspection.

"What happened to that dizzy hot feeling we get when we touch? Is it gone?"

"Lets hope so, ne?" Sasuke shifted slightly. "Maybe our bodies have finally become accustomed to the curse."

The warmth around him didn't feel artificial or all-encompassing, it was just simple body heat being emitted from the boy's chest pressed against his back. It made his cheeks unbelievably warm. He almost felt like he had a fever.

Naruto moved a bit because his neck had begun to ache. His eyelids were heavy, but hurt when closed. He contented himself for a couple of minutes by tracing the tattered, sewn patterns on the couch with his finger. The apartment was too quiet, even with the heater clanking petulantly in the corner. "You know when you said it was obvious I was somehow connected to the hidden villages?"

"Mhhm," Sasuke's voice was dripping with sleepiness. His breath on Naruto's neck was even and calm.

"Is it _just_ my appearance that gives it away? "

"Nope," He stated groggily. "Haven't you ever noticed how sleepers don't congregate near you? They're naturally repulsed."

"Repulsed?" Naruto repeated, feeling a bubble of nausea float up his throat.

"There's this innate barrier between you and other people," Sasuke tiredly explained. "It's nothing bad. People just involuntarily avoid you. And, when they do come into contact with you, things get rough. On the other hand, people from the hidden villages are naturally attracted to you. That's one other reason I infiltrated your school…I needed to see for certain how others interacted with you."

"Is that…normal for you people?"

Sasuke made a soft, deep sound in the back of his throat, almost as if he was tasting a thought before he molded it into a word.

"Not really." He concluded. Naruto felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. There were many times Naruto had wished he was grossly abnormal so that he could finally have a true, blatant reason for being shunned and disliked his entire life. But now, he only desired to be completely and utterly normal…he had never yearned for it in the past because he knew that it was a longing that could never be satisfied. Yet he still craved it, wishing that he had a spot somewhere in the world that connected and fit like a jigsaw piece with others.

"What about Shikamaru?"

"God," Sasuke groaned. "Can't we just sleep?"

"Shut up and answer me!" Naruto snapped. "I need answers, asshead."

"How about when we're both in our right minds then, hm? I've been sitting outside in a grungy hallway for six hours and you've just learned your entire life is a lie. Let's just, you know, ignore it for right now. Also, I've got one helluva backache and I think you're ready to sob your eyes out like a little girl."

Naruto bristled. "I was not! I'm not a pussy…I don't cry."

"Whatever," Sasuke yawned. "Just go to sleep, okay?"

Naruto yawned as well and shifted to fit more comfortably in Sasuke's arm. Strangely, his mind was churning slower. A mind-sweeping heat glossed his brain over.

"Everything's fine for right now."

He slowly closed his eyes.

* * *

The delectable scent of maple syrup and the muggy heat emanating off the stove composed a stuffy, but relaxing atmosphere in the apartment. The frying pan emitted delicious crackling noises as Iruka tenderly tossed the pancake sizzling inside into the air and caught it again. Naruto sat, sulking, on one side of the dinner table, drumming his fingers angrily as he listened to his guardian's current speech on love, which really just consisted of all the fluffy things he had read inside of greeting cards sent to him.

"Love really does have no boundaries, you see. And love conquers all, even gender and um, society's skewed view of sexuality. So you see, it's really alright to love anyone you please."

"For the last time Iruka, I'm not gay!" Naruto cried fiercely.

"Oh don't be that way, Naruto, dear."

Naruto's eyes snapped to Sasuke, who was currently sitting in front of him. He had remained mostly silent up until now, responding with courteous remarks and polite gestures. His lips flaunted the most teasing, arrogant, asshole-ish smirk he had ever seen depicted on that face.

"If Iruka accepts our love," Sasuke put his chin in his palm; his black eyes crinkled in amusement. "Then why must we hide it any longer?"

Naruto had woken up half and hour ago to Iruka, perched over him and Sasuke as they slept, wrapped desperately around each other on the couch. Even though Naruto had fruitlessly defended his sexuality, Iruka had claimed gravely he was in horrible denial and had been relentless with the speeches on love.

"Sasuke…"He seethed in a dangerous, growling low voice. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Oh don't be mad at me my dear Naruto," Sasuke's voice was swelling with artificiality. "I don't think I can hide our love any longer."

Iruka turned away from the sizzling pancake to adoringly watch the dark-haired boy's confession, a faint blush on his cheeks. Naruto had been stunned into a revolted silence.

"I always had such a crush on you—I'd watch you everyday as you walked out of class so frustrated, and I'd wish to hold you and make you feel better. I'd see you walk down the street alone, and curse my terrible shyness that I could not trot beside you and hold your hand. No girl in the entire school could rival your beauty."

Naruto had begun growling steadily through Sasuke's monologue. He had a ghastly insult prepared on his tongue but was unfortunately interrupted by Iruka.

"Oh that's right," He declared absently. "That girl Sakura who's your friend, she's not the diplomat's daughter is she?"

"Yeah," Naruto responded, feeling slightly put off by the abrupt conversation change. He felt a growing trepidation as he observed the solemn gleam that had appeared in Iruka's eyes.

"Oh dear, her mother came into the flower shop today. She's a beautiful woman, by the way" he added offhandedly. "She ordered a huge bouquet. Said they were get well flowers for her daughter. Apparently, she's in the hospital."

"Sakura's in the hospital?" Naruto's stomach sank. "What's wrong with her?"

Iruka's distressed gaze trailed to the linoleum floor.

"They don't really know." His voice was soft and sad. Naruto had often talked about Sakura to him, blabbing on about her kindness and good heart. He understood his words bared a dark weight. "She just won't wake up."

The pancake in his stomach gurgled threateningly as he looked from Iruka's slumped shoulders to his own thin, interlocked fingers. His brain no longer felt employable towards productive tasks. It was as though it was bulging with too much information, too much change that had occurred in his once-mundane-predictable life. An ache brewed beneath his right eyebrow.

And suddenly, it was as though his eyes were pulled up by an outside force to rest on Sasuke, whose own eyes seemed to have been heaved up as well. There was an intense thought bulging in his eyes; a message that could not be communicated orally. The black ice was as meticulous as ever, looking as though it were dissecting thoughts and theories in mere milliseconds. However, they seemed impatient to translate an un-inked word boiling inside his brain. They were finally revealing—they no longer glistened with secrets.

…_this has something to do with us._

* * *

SPPPOOOKKYYYSHIIITTTTT.

**Laura-Jane's-incredibly-unneeded-unloved-author's-note-of-absolute-peril: **

FUCKYEAH!

Finally, after three months of typing/labor this chapter is finished! I hope I didn't use words wrongly…I may have, sorry, I kind of took a long break that I didn't need to take and theeeeeeen lost all ability to remember words evaa.

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I have to be quick…I'm due at a party in ten minutes to forgive the mistakes and grammar at the mommmmenta.a..a.a.a.

PLEAAAAASSSSSSSSE HEEEEEELPPPPP **ME!!** (Bold spells importance! And the absolute love I have for eveverryrryone of you). I HAVE DECIDED to write another story along with this one. My problem with getting this story out so late mostly had everything to do with homework….but also! I got kind of bored with this story and began another…and then another…and then ANOTHER. But I don't know which one to do! I have the crappy little summaries, and I was hoping to see which one ya'll would be more interested in reading. It'll make this story go faster because then I'll be able to exchange and write some here and there whenever I feel the thought….which somehow makes it faster, I SWEAR IT.

Sooo, I hope they don't all sound like crap. Also, the writing in the summaries themselves are crap. But here they areeeee:

Title: Afterlife

Naruto has only ever known Sasuke—the center of his entire world. He is somehow 17 years old, but can only remember his past two years living his life with the current Head-Of-State for the Land of Fire, Sasuke Uchiha. He has never been outside the palace walls, even though he has attempted many failed escapes. And even though he desperately adores the Uchiha, he still senses that he is hiding something incredibly vital about his life before his captivity. Sasuke only insists that they were lovers…and he saved Naruto from himself.

THE PERKS: Naruto talks realllllllllllly cutely. Since he woke up two years before, he doesn't have such a great grasp on the English language so he misuses words allll the time. Also, you get a chance to see a very selfish but caring/paradoxal Sauske that would be uber fun to write. He's stern, but everything he does is for Naruto. Also, lots of adorable moments because Naruto is scared to sleep unless Sasuke's around…afraid he'll wakeup without all his memories again. Also, I love the theme it gives. I REALLLY DO. Giving in to your original humanity and admitting your selfish existence/ how people interact with those that are different and the process of 'othering'.

BADSHIT: A horrrrrrrrribly complicated plot. It's all political. And it's going to be very complicated. Also, it just might make you feel bad about humanity in general, even though it has a happy ending.

NOW for numba B. wait.

TITLE: Seahorse.

The world has descended into utter chaos. Dates are no longer recorded—there are no new trends, inventions, nothing. Wars ravage the world, eliminating cities and nations. All people now have a air of death about them, as though they are simply waiting to die. However, there is Naruto, a self-proclaimed optimist that believes there is a way to retrieve the world from its despair, he just doesn't know what. He lives waiting for the chance to save the world….

Enter Sasuke, a foreign, strange, HIGHLY attractive man who insists on having lots of sex with him. He boldly declares he is one of many demons that have watched over the planet for centuries and the only person who can save it, is his and Naruto's first born child. But how exactly does that happen?

YAYNESS: lots of sex XD and cute wonderful moments. Just all around awesomeness. Also, it's a story about hope. Who doesn't love hope?

ICKNESS: Rape (I am sooo scared to write a rape scene. It's one of my greatest fears).

So…..A or B? I WILL LOVE YOU FOREVER IF YOU TELL ME!

I lurve lurve lurve ya'll. If you leave me a lengthy, thick review…I will love you even more, if that's possible. ALSO, I will reply…but that could be a con I guess. CRAP I'm 30 minutes late.

I luuurrgeveve youuuuU!!

-Laura-Jane-

Ps. Lurve.


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